initial installation in YBCA's Room for Big Ideas, September 2007

This was a project commissioned to align with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ “Big Idea: Identity Shifts” thematic programming. I addressed the tensions of this “identity shifts” question, starting from a feeling of displacement, and then developing into a more complex meditation on liminality and presence. The installation started minimally in September with 4 small paintings hung on two pale green corner-walls, and then transformed into a fully-realized mural in March.

Doubledurian functioned as a sort of border-zone, situated in quiet, frictive, imaginative space informed by my ongoing work around feminized overseas contract labor and immigration narratives. The green fruit-like geometric forms were stylized durians (Southeast Asian fruits known for their spiky exterior, fleshy interior, and perversely pungent aroma). The durian functioned 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.

Another kind of identity “shift,” unanticipated and optical in nature, occurred in the space after completing the mural: given the bounce of color and light in the space at various times of day, the hues in the mural would also shift, adding an entirely new dimension to the piece.