Gallery

Works on the walls inside the bahay kubo, plus interpretive pieces on the grounds. Open any piece for a closer look — the same pages a QR code can open on your phone.

Inside the house

Wall art visitors see when they step into the bahay kubo.

Bahay Kubo in the Garden
This painting shows a traditional Filipino farmhouse — the bahay kubo — rising among tropical plants. In the Philippines, farming families often lived in a house like this near the rice fields through planting and harvest. It offered shade from the hot sun and shelter from tropical storms and monsoon rains. A traditional bahay kubo is built from materials found close at hand: bamboo, hardwood posts (haligi), and a roof thatched with nipa or other palm leaves. The roof is tall and steeply pitched, with long eaves. Warm air rises into the space above the living area, helping keep the rooms cooler. Rain runs off quickly in wet weather, and the eaves give a little covered space to move around outside when showers pass. Houses like this still stand across the Philippines today. Here at Kepaniwai, this image helps visitors learn about a living culture — one Filipino families carried with them to Hawaiʻi, and continue to honor with pride.
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Bahay Kubo Homestead
This bahay kubo at Kepaniwai Heritage Gardens is a living piece of Filipino heritage on Maui. The paintings inside help tell the story of Filipino life — home, work, celebration, and community — that generations brought from the Philippines to these islands. A bahay kubo stands on stilts. The open space beneath the living floor is called the silong (Tagalog for “shade” or “shelter”). It helps buffer rising floodwaters and keeps animals and pests out of the rooms above. The living area is designed to welcome fresh air and natural light. Many smaller houses have bamboo-slat floors so cool air can rise from the silong below. Some are built without a kisame (ceiling), so warm air can rise into the roof space and leave through vents near the peak. Every detail is practical — and beautiful. Looking at this house form, visitors can begin to understand how Filipino families shaped a home that breathes with the climate.
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Bayanihan
Bayanihan (buy-uh-NEE-hun) comes from the Filipino word bayan, meaning nation, town, or community. Bayanihan means “being in a bayan” — a spirit of communal unity, shared work, and cooperation toward a common goal. In rural areas, that spirit was once easy to see: when a family needed to move, neighbors would gather to carry not only belongings, but the entire bahay kubo itself, lifted on bamboo poles to a new place. That same spirit traveled with Filipino families to Hawaiʻi. It helped raise this house at Kepaniwai in 1952, and it still brings volunteers together to care for it today — a living example of bayanihan on Maui.
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Tinikling
This painting captures the joy of a community gathering — music, shared company, and dance at the center of it all. At the dancers’ feet are bamboo poles. The dance is Tinikling, a treasured folk dance of the Philippines that originated in Leyte in the Visayas. Dancers step lightly in and out as the poles clap together, imitating the quick movements of the tikling bird; as the rhythm quickens, the whole gathering seems to hold its breath. Tinikling remains one of the most widely recognized Filipino folk dances, performed at festivals, celebrations, and cultural gatherings around the world. It is a lively reminder of how music and movement bring people together — and of the traditions that continue to connect Filipino communities across generations.
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Carabao
The carabao is a domestic water buffalo long central to Philippine farm life. Across the islands it is cherished as a symbol of strength, patience, hard work, and resilience. For generations, Filipino farmers have relied on the carabao to plow flooded rice paddies and haul heavy loads through soft ground where machines often cannot go. When visitors see the carabao in these paintings, they are looking at a trusted partner in rural life — and a reminder of the farming knowledge Filipino families carried with them across the Pacific.
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Working the Land
A farmer in a salakot — the wide-brimmed hat that shades workers under a tropical sun — tends a bright green field, with palms nearby and a mountain on the horizon. Scenes like this honor the everyday dignity of Filipino rural labor: rising early, working the land, and living close to the harvest. That same dedication shaped the lives of sakada workers who came to Hawaiʻi to cut sugarcane and harvest pineapple. Their skill and perseverance helped build the islands’ agricultural history, and their descendants continue that story with pride today.
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Harvest in Community
Four people gather rice together in a golden-green field — hats on, arms full of stalks. In Filipino life, harvest is rarely a solitary chore. Neighbors and relatives turn out so the work can be finished as one community. That shared effort is another face of bayanihan: many hands lifting the same task. It is a value Filipino families brought to Hawaiʻi, where plantation camps and later neighborhoods continued to gather for work, celebration, and mutual care.
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Rice Harvest
Maui and Molokaʻi artist Philip Sabado honors his Ilokano roots in this warm, glowing work. Two sisters appear with the rice harvest in hand, ready to return to their village after a day in the fields. A woven basket overflows with golden stalks; traditional dress and the light of late day speak to both labor and beauty. Sabado was born and raised in the plantation village of Maunaloa, Molokaʻi. His parents, Felix and Severina Sabado, came from the Ilocos region of the Philippines — part of the larger story of Filipino families who made Hawaiʻi home. The happiness on the sisters’ faces speaks to a way of life rooted in land, family, and shared work. In many communities, the whole village turned out for the rice harvest — united in the spirit of bayanihan. This painting is displayed in the bahay kubo beneath a memorial in appreciation of Bartolome Santiago (Tata Bart).
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Handaan
Handaan is a Filipino feast — food prepared for a community celebration, when many gather to eat, visit, and feel like family. Days in the fields often began before sunrise, and gatherings — birthdays, baptisms, fiestas, and parties after a hard week — were cherished cultural events. Cooking for a crowd often started over an open fire, with food simmering in a large silyasi (also called a talyasi) — a deep iron wok big enough to feed many guests. In Hawaiʻi, cooks often burned kiawe wood, which burns hot and long. Experienced cooks tended the fire and the pot; younger helpers cut ingredients, stirred, and learned by watching. No one needed to be paid. Camaraderie, family, and the joy of feeding the community were reward enough. By the time the food was served, the cooks had become a jovial circle — living for these special moments when everyone felt like family. Visitors to the bahay kubo can almost smell the smoke and hear the laughter.
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Pinya
Pinya is the Filipino word for pineapple — shown here in a close view of spiked crowns and green-to-gold fruit. The crop has long been part of agricultural life in both the Philippines and Hawaiʻi. For many Filipino sakadas and their families, pineapple fields were a workplace and a livelihood. Images like this honor that labor and the abundance it produced, connecting a fruit familiar in the homeland with the fields that shaped Filipino life in these islands.
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Scenes of Daily Life
This composite painting illustrates Filipino life as many families lived it in Hawaiʻi’s plantation era — and as they remembered life from the homeland. Work began early. People rose around four in the morning, walked red-dirt roads to the open fields, and harvested sugarcane or pineapple before returning home in the early afternoon. After the day’s labor came rest and joy: fishing, dancing, and time with family. Behind the workers, a church tower reminds us of the deep faith many brought from the Philippines — a steady source of strength that helped communities endure and belong. Together, these images honor how Filipino people became part of Hawaiʻi’s story: through hard work, shared belief, and the cultures they kept alive with dignity.
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Philippine Heritage Map
This commemorative map shows the Philippine archipelago — Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao — the islands from which Filipino families journeyed to Hawaiʻi. Displayed here at the bahay kubo in Kepaniwai Park, Maui, it invites visitors to see the homeland on the wall and the living house around them as one story: heritage carried across the ocean and still cared for with pride in ʻĪao Valley. The map is dedicated in memorial and appreciation of Bartolome Santiago (Tata Bart).
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On the grounds

Markers and memorials around the Filipino exhibit at Kepaniwai — ready for a QR scan outdoors too.

Gallery

Inside the house

Bahay Kubo in the Garden

Bahay Kubo Homestead

Bayanihan

Tinikling

Carabao

Working the Land

Harvest in Community

Rice Harvest

Handaan

Pinya

Scenes of Daily Life

Philippine Heritage Map

On the grounds

Dr. José P. Rizal

Filipino Exhibit