Belongings: A Collection of Things Nelson Left Behind

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Premiering Fall 2026 | Richland Library Main, Assembly Street, Columbia, South Carolina
In Celebration of Filipino American History Month

What do we leave behind when we are gone, and what stories do our belongings tell in our absence?

Belongings is a humanistic exhibition that explores the immigrant life of Nelson Baldemor, a Filipino-American resident of Danville, Virginia, whose life was suddenly cut short in 2021. Having no next of kin, Nelson’s things were saved by a caring neighbor, Maria Lourdes Pérez Muñiz. Now a resident of Columbia, South Carolina, Muñiz passed these to Chiara Cox, a local Filipino American cultural advocate who transformed Baldemor’s treasured personal belongings into this exhibit of an immigrant’s memory.

The exhibition's title plays with the portmanteau of the word Belongings:

  • Belong-Things: ownership of items that define one’s identity.

  • Be-Longing: an intense, prolonged yearning.

  • Be-Long-Things: possessions that take up space and/or last a long time.

Through primary documents, photographs, and original artwork, Belongings invites us to look closely at the remnants of a single life. In doing so, we discover the universal principles of bayanihan, kapwa, and pasalubong that Filipino Americans weave into the local fabric of the neighborhoods they call home.

The exhibit invites you to reflect: What is remembered, what endures, and how do our own stories intersect through the objects we choose to keep?

Location: Richland Library (Downtown Columbia, SC)
Duration: Open through 30 October 2026
Celebration Night: 9 October 2026 6:30-8:30pm
Learn More: https://www.angpamana.com/travelling-exhibits/belongings

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Contributed