two wooden planks, six holes

(private space series)
cardboard and cut papers, including tar paper, recycled office supplies, metallic paper, and paper thread
34.5″ x 7.5″ x 3.5″
2018

This pair of pieces (along with about my new normal) was created to complement choreographer Yayoi Kambara‘s home season performances of Ikkai: Once at ODC Theater. Each was installed in a bathroom in the theater, responding both to Kambara’s exploration of Japanese American internment histories and the site context of the bathrooms themselves. They feature quotes, cut from tar paper underlayment, reflecting on the dehumanizing lack of privacy in carceral spaces, drawn from interviews and narratives by both Japanese American internees and people in the contemporary US prison industrial complex. Taking inspiration from the tradition of creating art from mundane and discarded objects in extreme conditions, the pieces build upon those fragments of text using basic materials such as cardboard and recycled papers, transforming them into something beyond their mundane origins to find hope of transcendence and survival.