Mail Order Brides/M.O.B.
(Eliza “Neneng” Barrios; Reanne “Immaculata” Estrada; Jenifer “Babs” Wofford)

For over 15 years, Reanne “Immaculata” Estrada (b. in Manila, lives and works in Los Angeles), Eliza “Neneng” Barrios ( born in San Diego, lives and works San Francisco), and Jenifer “Baby” Wofford (born and lives in San Francisco, grew up in Hong Kong), have worked collaboratively as Mail Order Brides/M.O.B., a trio of Filipina-American artists engaged in an ongoing conversation with culture and gender. While other mail order brides are conventionally perceived as ideal obedient domestics, it has not escaped this trio’s attention that, acronymically speaking, “Mail Order Brides” abbreviates down to a more sinister acronym that informs the darker subtext of their operations.

Taking matters into their own well-manicured hands, the Brides deploy their innate charm, guile, and fine fashion sense to gently pry open the eyes of the closed-minded. Enforced enlightenment has arrived in the form of karaoke videos and museum makeovers, in photographic psychodramas and parade performances, in bridesmaid entrepreneurships and corporate dominations.

M.O.B. “hits” have included the de Young Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco Arts Commission, Southern Exposure (San Francisco, CA), the San Jose Museum of Art, the Triton Museum of Art (San Jose, CA), Drive-By Cinema (San Diego, CA), McColl Center for Visual Art (Charlotte, NC), Green Papaya Art Projects (Manila, Philippines). Their video screenings include the S.F. International Asian American Film Festival, the S.F. International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, the New York Mix Festival and the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery.

For a comprehensive catalog of Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. work go to Jenifer K. Wofford’s site

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