Faculty of Arts & Science

Criticism and Curatorial Practice

Asia Ruggiero

Miguel Caba

Miguel Caba is an artist based in Boston with a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Their work explores how experiences and relationships can be mediated through technology and digital fabrication. They are a recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Grant and Jeffrey Ahn Jr. Fellowship, and have been featured in New American Paintings Issue 176 Northeast.Four works by Caba are featured as part of the exhibition: Sunlight in a Deep Forest on view at Mark Christopher Gallery March 27 to April 17 2026. Curated by Asia Ruggiero. Documentation by Philip Leonard Ocampo.

“Miguel Caba, Case, 2025. Acrylic on wood, 16 x 8 in. This work resembles a small, upright suitcase opened into memory. Two gently curling panels are joined by a metal hinge: above, the rhythm of a ceiling; below, the patterned warmth of a floor. The wood gives it body and weight, while the hinge suggests something portable, private, and repeatedly opened. The work translates care through closeness to domestic detail, treating the grandmother’s home as something worth carrying.Miguel Caba, Morning Glory, 2024. Acrylic on wood, 9 x 7 in. Appearing luminous and intimate, a flower is enlarged until it feels almost celestial. Rendered in deep violet-blue against a dark, flickering ground, the bloom seems to glow from within, suspended between photograph and apparition. Caba describes the work this way: “my mother sends me images of her garden each spring-summer. Although I am not able to see her garden in person, the images she sends bring me closer to her. By engraving her images onto wood, I work with the same pixels that were once in her hands and are now in mine.”Miguel Caba, Unrolling, 2026. Acrylic on wood, 12 x 24 in. The work centers the gesture of packing precious material for travel, shaped by the artist’s movement from the Philippines to Boston. A curved panel printed with a blue textile pattern rests like a tightly packed bundle, while a narrow strip spills outward across the floor, suggesting fabric in the act of being set free. What is contained does not stay fully contained. The work is a nod to the gesture of packing precious material for travel, where protection becomes a tender, deliberate act. “Inspired by balikbayan boxes, I am interested in how sending things, objects and images between loved ones can bridge the distance between them.” - Caba Miguel Caba, Here we lie together, 2026. Acrylic on wood, 9 x 9 in. Folded garments are transformed into an architecture of kinship, where the clothes of mother and child rest in intimate adjacency. Their stacked forms read as compressed traces of bodies, carrying the shape of wear, touch, and daily life even in stillness. Each textile retains its own pattern and character, yet together they form a single structure built through closeness. Kinship emerges not as grand declaration but as quiet accumulation that is layered, patterned, and held in shared space. ”