MacArthur Nurses (Pushing)

Jenifer Wofford’s diverse work has included performance, installation, photography, digital art, drawing, and painting. She was born in San Francisco but raised in Hong Kong, Dubai, Malaysia, and California in a mixed Filipino/American family, an international and intercultural experience that has informed and shaped her art. Wofford said, “I make work that addresses hybridity, authenticity, history and global culture in a broad sense…Regardless of approach, my consistent throughlines are imagination, humor, a crisp visual approach and a healthy appreciation for the absurd.”

MacArthur Nurses inverts the famous World War II photo of General MacArthur wading ashore at the Philippine island of Leyte in 1944, fulfilling his promise to return after being driven out by Japanese forces in 1942. Wofford’s nurses, mirroring the historical image, signify in part the large number of Filipina nurses working overseas, but also the long and complex history of the Philippines as a former U.S. colony, a complexity reflected in the figures themselves. The nurses in the foreground stride forward purposefully, their heroic, idealized forms raising transnational labor migration to an iconic plane. Other nurses, however, seem despondent, suggesting the underlying hardship and emotional toll they experience.