M.O.B. visits campus March 14

For more than 18 years, Eliza Barrios, Jenifer Wofford and Reanne Estrada have worked collaboratively as the arts collective Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. Through humor, the group explores gender, race and cultural stereotypes of Filipinas in work that has included karaoke videos, museum makeovers, photographic psychodramas, installations and posters. The name is a play on the controversial practice of arranged marriages through international introduction agencies. Barrios and Wofford will visit CSU Monterey Bay on March 14 as part of the university’s Visiting Artist series. Their free presentation will get under way at 6 p.m. in the Alumni and Visitors Center.

They will talk about their individual work and then discuss M.O.B.’s work currently on view in the exhibition, “New Stories from the Edge of Asia,” at the San Jose Museum of Art. In the exhibit, artists take on identity issues – Asian identity in particular – via video, film, multimedia works, photography and performance art.

M.O.B.’s work has been seen at the De Young Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the Chinatown Cultural Center in San Francisco; the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara; and Green Papaya Art Projects in Manila, the Philippines. The Alumni and Visitors Center is located on the corner of Gen. Jim Moore Boulevard and Inter-Garrison Road on the CSUMB campus. Driving directions and a campus map.

The Visiting Artist Series is presented by the university's Visual and Public Art Department.

Photo courtesy of M.O.B. Always A Bridesmaid, Never A Bride (Posies), 2005