What if basketball had been invented by Filipinas, and they still ruled the court? That’s the premise of Empress, Jenifer K Wofford’s speculative origin myth for the game. The real history belongs to another empire. American teachers brought the game to the colonial Philippines as a sport for girls, then struck it from the curriculum, worried that young women in bloomers would pick up aggression, promiscuity, or even lesbianism. Filipinos fell hard for basketball, but mostly for the men’s game. “Not that any nation celebrates women’s athletics equally, to be clear,” Wofford notes. 

Her paintings world-build around a 1910s photograph of a girls’ team from Apalit, Pampanga, letting its players break loose. Now they’re diwata, spiritual protectresses, leaping and contorting in poses lifted from art history, colliding in a frenzy without losing an athlete’s precision. Woven banig mats line the gallery walls, turning the gallery into a clubhouse crossed with a tiki lounge. Under the loud colors and crisp lines are serious questions about empire, gender, and who gets to play. Like a court in any barangay, or neighborhood, this one is built for community, trash talk and cheering included.

Jenifer K Wofford is a San Francisco artist and educator whose work is informed by hybridity, history, and calamity. She is also 1/3 of the Filipina-American artist trio MOB. 

She has exhibited at venues including SFMOMA, the Asian Art Museum, Frieze Los Angeles, YBCA, BAMPFA, Oakland Museum of California, and the San Jose Museum of Art (all California), as well as at Asia Society (Houston), Wing Luke Museum (Seattle), DePaul Museum (Chicago), Osage (Hong Kong), Chengdu Biennale (Chengdu) and Silverlens (Manila + NY). She is currently working on several large public art projects in California.

Wofford is a 2025 San Francisco Bay Area Artadia Awardee, a 2025 Artpower Awardee, and a 2017 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Her awards include the 2023 YBCA 100 list, the Eureka Fellowship, and grants from Art Matters, the San Francisco Arts Commission, and the Center for Cultural Innovation. She has been Artist-in-Residence at Montalvo/Lucas Artist Residency (Saratoga), Liguria Study Center (Italy) and KinoKino (Norway).

Born/based in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong, Dubai, Malaysia and the Bay Area, Wofford is full-time faculty in Fine Arts and Philippine Studies at the University of San Francisco. She holds degrees from the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) and UC Berkeley (MFA).