Long Distance Call, 2021
Long Distance Call playfully expands upon contemporary discourses on cultural identity. The mixed media installation questions how the sum of material parts, when arranged, could potentially influence and mislead a viewer’s perception; an experimental ode to Gestaltism. Though the whole appears to represent a ‘Middle Eastern’ tapestry, it is nothing but an artifact of an artist’s life experiences and people met along the way.
The materials incorporated in the installation transverse between the individual and the collective. All of the arranged elements on the burlap were gathered from social events, after they were deemed useless, i.e. popped balloons, burnt-out candles, opened beer bottles and the remainder of a pizza box… It was the process of collection that guided the final composition of the consolidated form. The work was inspired by something Slavoj Žižek said. In one video, he talks behind a human wasteland and exclaims, ‘When you’re really in love with someone you don’t idealize, you love the ugly parts too.’ The work also look for ways to love these social remnants by approaching them with care, and with a process of constant experimentation and iteration. On the ground, two semi-transparent shower heads, filled with my own hair, are metamorphized into a phone-like sculpture. The conjoined shower heads sit on cushions, made of two painted umbrella fabric. The entire installation evokes a reinterpretation of different games, like a Ouija board or broken telephone, where the absent players remain unable to communicate with one another.
Long Distance Call delves into the shared and communicative elements of identity. Through the chosen social materials, identity is being conceptualized as a collective or group quality, rather than being restricted to a singular body. However, despite its assertion of identity as collective communication, this work deals with its ironic inability to truthfully communicate a cultural experience. The tapestry satirically represents an idea of what a ‘Middle Eastern’ tapestry would look like, yet fails to reflect what it is or how it functions, and that’s the whole point. The work has nothing to do with a cultural background, but rather amalgamates moments shared with others into this one tangible experience.
Long Distance Call was exhibited alongside a themed commission residency exhibition, Borderless, Stateless, in Trinity Square Video’s Vitrine.
Long Distance Call (2021), Two handheld shower heads, shower hose, human hair, water droplets, thread, Reused (Burlap, Popped balloons, bread clips, tea light metal cups, cannabis packing bags, beer bottle caps, pizza box packaging sheet, festival wristbands, cigarette filters, umbrella fabric)