a boundary, a suggestion
a boundary, a suggestion
Bellevue Art Museum, Nov 2021-March 2022
handmade cardboard substrate, thread, porcelain, image transfer, repurposed wood, paint, pigment, 5-channel video, 3-channel audio, cultural artifacts, photographs, stones
A multi-faceted installation created for the Architectural Biennial at the Bellevue Art Museum, this body of work was the first completed body of work that articulated my interest in societal themes, values, and imperialist histories represented by the European painting canon - and connecting these things to contemporary issues concerning land theft, an Imperialist-induced climate crisis, and the commodification of art objects.
artist statement: This work is about legibility and access. About image and consent, power and institution, entitlement and ownership. It is about the mostly extractive relationship between marginalized artists and hegemonic institutions, and the audiences who frequent them. It is about the demand for trauma to be performed, aestheticized - designed to be commodified, consumed, and leveraged as a line item in investment portfolios designed to maximize financial equities rather than correct socioeconomic ones.
This work is an attempt to return a gaze, and to play with the trap of seduction (of image, of material, of language) while witholding true content, full access, and personhood. A tension.
a return (of body to place, of gaze to gaze) - image transfer of personal photograph and Las Meninas on handmade reclaimed cardboard substrate, video, mirror with etching, wood frame
Hanging on the right wall in the above pictured installation, this painting, using Las Meninas as a starting point, interrogates the gaze of the viewer, inviting in but not revealing completely, while the etched mirror (showing the parents of the child depicted in Las Meninas), the hidden video component, and the hidden layer that has an image transfer of Las Meninas behind a wooden frame in the painting, ask the viewer to look deeper and implicate themselves in the creation of this work and the consumption of the image.
In this image, it is possible to see the piece of mirrored acrylic (left) in which I’ve etched the painting hanging in Las Meninas depicting the child’s parents, which is a reference to the relationship between the patron of a painting and the painting itself. By etching this painting onto a piece of mirrored acrylic embedded into this piece’s surface, I hope to invoke this legacy of funding and art, implicating the viewer in this relationship when they glance their reflection in the mirror.
On the right, you can see the eye of Las Meninas peeking out of the triangle hole in the surface of the painting. This, to me, is a play on the idea of the underpainting - in this case, referring to Las Meninas, which, although not visible to the viewer, lives behind this new painting as a kind of historical structure that informs and influences how I make art and how that art is viewed and valued.
left image: false wall made of handmade reused cardboard substrate and “Third Floor White” paint, small sculpture of porcelain, wood, pigment, paint, and wire. above image: The back-end of the installation showcases archival footage of Indigenous Panjabi folk dancing, cultural artifacts accumulated by the artist, and a series of paintings hung in an overlapping row: wrapping paper whose patterns have been traced with paint (something I used to do when I was young with ballpoint pens) and then photocopied over and over until the final photocopy: 56 photocopies in, becomes an entirely different painting that the one we began with.
paint, porcelain, pigment, kenaf fiber, thread, styrofoam, image transfer
This piece, which hung about 25ft above the floor in the BAM installation, reveals Las Meninas as the inspiration and source for the entire exhibition, within a sculpture that resembles both an artifact and a kind of trophy placed out of reach.