2008
painting, installation

This installation changed over 6 months: it started minimally, with 4 small paintings hung on two pale green corner-walls, and then evolved into a fully-realized mural. This project was informed by previous and ongoing studio meditations on overseas labor and immigration narratives.

The geometric forms are stylized durians (Southeast Asian fruits known for their spiky exterior, fleshy interior and pungent aroma). The durian functions as a sort of vas hermeticum: a sealed form suggesting an overseas contract worker’s tropical roots, his/her conspicuity in an institutionalized, homogenized environment, a vessel for containment and transference, and a sort of ominous self-protection.

doubledurian stage 1

doubledurian stage 1

doubledurian stage 2

doubledurian stage 2

doubledurian stage 2

2008
public art kiosk posters
project of the San Francisco Arts Commission

This 6 poster project imagines 6 years in the life of the fictional Flor Villanueva, a young woman who has emigrated from Manila to San Francisco. This graphic novel-as-public art situates Flor in a variety of settings both in San Francisco and Manila in the 1970s, with captions of her thoughts about both personal and political developments of the era.

The illustrations were hand-drawn in ink, then colored and laid out in Photoshop.The posters were installed in kiosks along San Francisco’s Market Street, where pedestrians were able to follow Flor’s story, year by year, block by block.

Flor 1973

Flor 1974

Flor 1975

Flor 1976

Flor 1978

Flor 1977

Flor 1973

Flor 1974

Flor 1977

Flor 1977

Flor 1977

Flor 1978

Flor 1978

Flor 1973

Flor 1978

2009
wall installation of prints

A variable dimension wall piece incorporating 6 archival prints. It’s a dig into the binding, colonial and commercial ties between the US, Philippines, Mexico, China and Spain, as well as a celebration of the pleasures of flinging shoes as a political/poetic gesture.

The prints are best installed in a pentagram format: its occult associations correlate to the occult relationship between these nations, as well as the 5-point star’s connections to patriotism, militarism, faith, celebrity, and power. The light spots beneath each of the shoe-throwers are also the triangles that comprise the 5 points of the star.

2008
installation
sculpture, shallow-relief, wall painting

Airports, offices, malls, high schools: metal detectors are everywhere. There’s something both wonderful and awful about these dumb, clunky devices, situated in such highly fraught but also totally mundane environments, in situations where masses must be processed and moved on efficiently and undramatically.

In the installation, two walk-thru metal detectors function as portals/thresholds into more otherworldly environments. The “landscapes” on each of the four gallery walls have four specific points of reference (public school, Eden, touristed islands, shopping mall).

2005
acrylic, vinyl, paper on panel
commissioned by Alameda County Alliance for Arts Learning Leadership
and CCA Center for Art and Public Life

Maps provide us with the tools to navigate both physical and personal space. This public piece was commissioned to be collaborative and inclusive, and to address how the arts in Alameda County schools and communities are vital.

Taken from a mirrored map of Alameda County’s 18 school districts, each district was isolated and made into an “island” to re-think lands as new points of arts connection. Overarching questions linking the components were “What connects you to the arts?” and “How do the arts connect us?” Specific Alliance words (“compassion”, “interdependence”, etc) were also employed to create further connections.

At a table in front, visitors drew or wrote on red paper circles, then added them to the wall by locating where (“Oakland”) or what (“Collaboration”) they felt connected to. Wonderful drawings, scribbles, poems, rants, and questions were eventually scattered in a highly organic way across the piece.