A Tentative Project Proposal:
This project is to be executed in two parts. The first as an installation at Project Row Houses, Houston, TX and the second at the exhibition “Drawing Out Conversations” in Taipei, Taiwan.
Much of my work is around hybridity as it surfaces in mark making and meaning making in diasporic culture. At PRH, I am interested in creating an installation engaging the Filipino and surrounding communities around Baybayin, an almost forgotten indigenous Filipino script that predates the Spanish colonization but was virtually eliminated by the end of 400 years of colonial rule. It has enjoyed a resurgence in the US in the form of tattoos as a way to mark and trace identity. What I’d like to do is tell the story of the script as a means of telling the story of what happens to people in diaspora. In the story of Baybayin is the story of the Philippine people, the legacy of imperialism and the evolution of hybrid transnational cultural identity across the world.
A print from the colonial manuscript "Doctrina Christiana" (1593) showing a Spanish friar with traces of Baybayin script in the illustration.
Map of the Spanish East Indies (Colonies in Southeast Asia)
For”Drawing Out Conversations”, I would like to present a multi-channel animation piece that draws from Filipino and Chinese myths, language, and writing to tell the story of my experience of the Asian diaspora. I will be taking inspiration from historical illustrations, painting, and calligraphy to create a dreamscape that follows follows the flux of people and culture through time–taking an intimate personal look at the legacy of colonization, migration, assimilation, hybridization, and nostalgia.
Int'l Boxing Champion Manny Pacquiao on Baybayin.com
(Roughly, the text in this image “Ang mamatay nang dahil sa ‘yo” means “To die for you”)
