Janna Añonuevo Langholz (b. 1988, they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist who creates ephemeral pieces through photography, performance, installation, self-publishing, and relational art, often mistaken as a historian or activist. They were born in St. Louis at the site of the 1904 World’s Fair. Their site-specific work has investigated 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. They collaborated with the City of Clayton, Missouri to commemorate the site of the Philippine Village and are currently working to mark the gravesites of the Indigenous people who died and were buried in St. Louis in 1904. They are also working to honor their own Dumagat Remontado heritage they reclaimed through their research.

Añonuevo received a BFA in Studio Art (Fibers) from Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri in 2011 and received a full fellowship to attend graduate school at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas in 2013. They received their MFA in 2015 with a concentration in photography and are most interested in alternative and darkroom processes. In 2016, they received a fellowship to unwalk the Lewis and Clark trail with Signal Fire. They were named Best Activist in Riverfront Times’ Best of St. Louis 2021 and were taken advantage of by Smithsonian curators soon thereafter. They have given public lectures at National Building Arts Center and Bard Graduate Center in 2023 and 2024. Their work has respectfully been featured and reported on in Past Present, Philippine Daily Inquirer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Rappler, Interaksyon, Riverfront Times, and St. Louis Public Radio. Their work has also been stolen and exploited by The Washington Post. They have unrecognized ancestral contributions in museum collections across the country. They live/work between St. Louis and the Philippines and are the caretaker of the Philippine Village Historical Site.

CV