Photo by Carmi Tugday
Janna Añonuevo Langholz (b. 1988, she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans photography, performance, installation, self-publishing, and relational art. She was born at the site of the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri and lives and works at the former site of the Philippine Village. Her site-specific work and research primarily investigates the period of US colonization of the Philippines between 1898-1946 and how it has shaped the histories and geographies of the US Midwest and South. She creates public, participatory projects outside of institutional frameworks to expose historical and present-day injustices and reclaim her own heritages. She ran the project Filipino American Artist Directory for six years and is currently working to commemorate the site of the Philippine Village and honor the remains of Indigenous people who died and were buried in St. Louis in 1904.
Añonuevo received a BFA in Fibers from Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri in 2011 and received a full fellowship to attend graduate school at SMU Meadows School of the Arts in Dallas, Texas in 2013. She received her MFA in 2015 with a concentration in photography and is most interested in alternative and darkroom processes. In 2016, she received a fellowship to unwalk the Lewis and Clark trail with Signal Fire. She was named Best Activist in Riverfront Times’ Best of St. Louis 2021. She participated in an artist residency at University of Michigan in 2022 exploring their Philippine collections and has given public lectures at National Building Arts Center and Bard Graduate Center in 2023 and 2024. Her work has been featured in Riverfront Times, St. Louis Public Radio, Esquire Philippines, and World Literature Today. Her work has also been exploited by The Washington Post. Añonuevo has unrecognized ancestral contributions in museum collections across the United States and is the caretaker of the Philippine Village Historical Site in St. Louis.