Ma. Yohana Rosales Frias

Biography

Yohana’s professional interests are mostly shaped by her degree in Behavioral Sciences and currently works as a museum researcher at the National Museum of the Philippines. She is highly interested in arts and the humanities, social sciences, photography, and museology.

As a researcher and as part of the curatorial team of the Ethnology Division, Yohana’s work constitutes archival and field research, collection management, guided tours, gallery monitoring, and conceptualization of exhibitions, including exhibition layout proposals and write-ups of exhibition text. In 2020 her role has shifted to producing media (photo editing, poster design, and video production) for her division’s social media posts.

Her research interests are mainly in the field of indigenous knowledge, visual anthropology, comparative religion, and gender studies. Yohana continuously works on the Visual Anthropology Program of the National Museum, which entails launching photography exhibitions and conducting film showing programmes.

From 2015 to 2019, Yohana has contributed to launching 10 visual anthropology exhibitions and facilitated 12 film programmes. The latest of which is the Dia de Los Muertos Photography Exhibition on November 5, 2019 in partnership with the Embassy of Mexico in Manila, Philippines. From 2017 to 2019, Yohana has also worked with her colleagues for the Hibla ng Lahing Filipino travelling exhibition, lecture Series, weaving demonstrations and embroidery workshops featuring pineapple and silk cloths from the Philippines, which has been launched in Asia (Tokyo, Bangkok, Singapore), Europe (London, Lisbon, Madrid, Frankfurt, Prague, Geneva), and North and Latin America (New York, Washington D.C., Honolulu, San Francisco, and Buenos Aires).

In 2020 Yohana completed an exhibition project titled Moryonan: Art and Devotion exhibition located at our regional museum in Boac, Marinduque, Philippines. It features the religious and cultural festival of ‘moryonan’ which is an intangible cultural heritage of Marinduque. It was the first project in which Yohana was heavily involved in logistics, curatorial work, media production, and exhibition layout services. This entailed selection, cataloguing, inventory, and photo-documentation of the collection included in the exhibit; designing of display systems and production of exhibition media (text design, photograph editing and layout, poster, activity sheet, and tarpaulin design).

At the British Museum
During her time on the International Training Programme, Yohana was based in the Asia Department, and spent her partner placement at Norfolk Museums Service.

Yohana worked with Sarah Abdolattif Elsheekh on her Object in focus project, Hunt Krater: A Journey of Culture.

Yohana’s place on the International Training Programme was generously supported by the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust.

Legacy Projects

In 2020, Yohana attended the International Training Programme’s series of online subject specialist sessions. Yohana attended:
The Samarkand Half Marathon, cultural accessibility and ‘going digital’ during COVID-19
Skill-Sharing Workshop: Interpretation and Label Writing
Go mMAD {Make Museums Accessible Digitally}
Outreach at Glasgow Museums – what now?
Egyptology in Lockdown: Connecting collections with isolated people