Daisy Nolasco is a Scarborough-based, second-generation Ilokano (Filipino)-Canadian multidisciplinary artist, community arts facilitator, and mental health advocate. Community-rooted with a background in social work, peer support, and research, she is passionate about cultivating new spaces for her community to connect, create, and learn together. Daisy often wonders about the ways that identity, mental health, & creativity shape diasporic realities. Her art draws from ancestral rememberings, faraway dreamscapes, and her gigantic feelings. Lately, she’s felt drawn to themes such as home and displacement, culture and community, softness, and hope.

Daisy's latest work - and first ever zine, balikbayan ◇, explores the concept of home ("balik" meaning "return" and "bayan" meaning "homeland"):

where is home if you're in & of the diaspora? through raw journal feels, photos, & doodles (old & new), this is the story of how i “went home” to the philippines for the first time -- unfortunately, in the middle of a mental health crisis. over nearly a year, i navigate the tensions within my diasporic identity, find solace in my family's stories of resistance, love, migration, & survival, & finally discover what home means to me.

You may also know Daisy from Scarborough Health Network Foundation’s Love, Scarborough campaign, and her work with kin + care collective, Toronto Ward Museum, and Bayanihan Empowerment.