An exhibition by Lualo Studio ~
Jenah Maravilla, Trisha Morales, Rea Sampilo & Christian Toledo

Altar of Care is a gathering place. A thank you, a living archive of how we care for each other. Here, the altar is both form and framework—bringing together Lualo’s communal artistic and cultural movement-based work through archival materials, installation pieces, collective memory, art-making workshops, collaborations and story circles.

Rooted in Houston, Texas - this exhibition emerges within overlapping conditions - migration, environmental crises, attacks on trans youth, and ongoing educational erasure. Amid these pressures, practices of care continue to persist and evolve. Altar of Care asks: How do communities resist isolation and disposability to build networks of care and joy? What does care look like in our daily survival and organizing?

Guided by their pillars of culture, healing, embodiment, storytelling, and collaboration, Lualo Studio approaches art as a relational practice—one that understands culture as shaping how we see and move through the world, healing as collective, the body as a site of knowledge, storytelling as a tool for narrative shift, and collaboration as essential to building more just and connected futures.

This altar is a ritual: a practice where memory, labor, grief, and love are held together. Here, care is not abstract - it is everyday acts, it is mutual aid, the quiet labor of tending to one another, and showing up when systems do not.

Visitors are invited to engage as both witness and participant—to reflect on the networks of care that have held them, honor unseen labor, contribute their own stories, and imagine futures rooted in collective care.

Altar of Care is a continuation—
a reminder that the future we are building is shaped by how we care for one another now.

This exhibition is dedicated to our friend Rachel Jackson (1987 - 2025).

ABOUT LUALO STUDIO
Lualo Studio, lualo (loo•wall•oh) meaning prayer or offering in Ilocano, is a Houston-based cause-driven creative studio, formed to support community-centric work. Through storytelling, movement-building, and creative gatherings, the studio asks collaborators: How can our work or our lives be a moving prayer? How can we make space to create spaces of deep connection through the gifts we each have?

Their work is guided by four pillars: Culture and community-informed approaches, Healing through collective action, Embodiment of rights and freedom, Storytelling as a means of advocacy, and Collaboration for inclusivity. Lualo Studio consists of four artists (Jenah Maravilla, Trisha Morales, Rea Sampilo, and Christian Toledo), with roots as founding team members of Pilipino American Unity for Progress, Inc Texas Chapter (2016-2020).

Altar of Care is a living testament to the collaborative nature of the studio; highlighting the interconnected struggles and triumphs of the Houston community in the current political climate. Highly interactive programming activations will touch on themes of identity, land, migration and belonging, knowledge sharing, and communal art, in the hopes of story sharing, deep listening, and imagining a kinder, more caring future.