Jasmine Orpilla is a multipliced Ilokana/x-American vocal performance artist and operatic composer of experimental theatrical sound installations, in which she activates her lifelong practices of folk ritual dance, combat systems, and music of the Philippine diaspora, against the contemporary American framing of the first generation, imperialist military culture of her own childhood. Unlimited by “soprano” nor so-called classical beauty, her unfiltered voice-in-motion exorcizes eurocentric performance structures from her muscle memory, while remaining accountable to the oral legacies and languages of the Indigenous Pilipino musical systems she, her family, and community remains indebted to. With decades embodying center with her energetically intensive solo practice as a multi-instrumental and multilingual writer/performer, Orpilla’s work serves to humanize and honor the intersectionality of the Filipina/x-American body in agency, despite ongoing minimization of colonial history’s revisionist narratives.

Orpilla’s performance installations are intentionally embedded with materials from her own family archives, such as portraiture, heirloom jewelry, clay pottery, rare handwoven cloth, uniforms, medallions, defunct weaponry, soil, bone, gold, copper, hand-forged musical instruments and handwritten letters. As fragile materials that have survived wartime, she creates with them a kinetic, movement- and sound- sensitive space in which to re-visit, elevate, or question the inter-generationally impacted stories preserved in each object, while marking their decay over time in correlation to her voice and body.

Following intensive experience with world-renowned theater and opera directors such as Ariane Mnouchkine at Théâtre du Soleil, Paris, and Peter Sellars, over the past ten years Orpilla has taken space, internationally performing in genre-defying voices at REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA; CAP UCLA, Los Angeles, CA; LACMA, Los Angeles, CA; Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles, CA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA; Kampnagel, Hamburg, Germany; Théâtre Paris-Villette, Paris, France; HAU Hebbel Berlin, Germany; and more. Jasmine Orpilla’s solo and collaborative work has been supported by Creative Capital, United Artists, California Arts Council, Alliance for California Traditional Arts, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Durfee Foundation, Mairie de Paris, and more.