Mural in Vancouver's Mount Pleasant honours victims of Lapu-Lapu Day tragedy
Balancing cool blues with bright, warm oranges and yellows, she creates the image of a boat filled with people, representing those who died at Vancouver's Lapu-Lapu Day festival in April. The boat itself is inspired by the manunggul jar, a pre-colonial burial jar from the Philippines.
"We take care of our dead after they've passed, and we continue to do that," Cortez said.
Eleven people were killed and many others injured on April 26 when the driver of a black SUV slammed into a crowd as the festival was winding down just after 8 p.m. The driver, 30-year-old Kai-Ji Adam Lo, has since been charged with 11 counts of second-degree murder.
Since then, the local Filipino community has come together to heal in myriad ways — as have communities connected to the event across the globe.
For Cortez, making art helps her to process grief.
"Creating this piece actually helped me move through some of that, and heal," she said.
The piece, titled Pagalala at Pagasa (Remembrance and Hope), was painted as part of Vancouver's Astro Arts Festival.
She approached Filipino B.C., the organization that hosted Lapu-Lapu Day, to see if they'd sponsor the piece — and the group responded with an enthusiastic yes.
The festival was named for an Indigenous resistance fighter in the Philippines who fought against Spanish colonization in the 16th century, and celebrates Filipino heritage and culture in Vancouver.
"As the festival organizers, we thought it was important for us that we play a role in how the community heals," executive director Kristina Corpin-Moser said.
"As the memory sort of fades from the public discourse, I think it's really important to honour the victims and those affected by this tragedy, to commemorate and memorialize them in a way that reminds people that these lives mattered. These were brothers and sisters, friends, daughters."
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