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photos by charlotte geary

THINGS THAT DON'T HAVE NAMES, Tephra ICA, 2019

This project portrays selfhood as a collection of environments featuring ordered and piled sewn “fragments” using fabric remnants, material sold cheap and in bulk expressing identity’s mix as both a transformative and marginalizing force. Alone and apart from one another, these “fragments” are incomprehensible, but as intersectional pieces, might form indiscernible bodies accompanied by animated projections. Animation is a literal organization of fragments combined to make motion, offering in its tedium, a unique context for this non-linear storytelling. These micro points of view of amalgamated body pieces displayed as curated autonomous ecosystems. This project explores, through installation, not only the “untruth” of perceived and constructed cultural contexts, but also considers through anecdote and interview, the "corrective tactics" used over generations by marginalized communities to teach ourselves about American identity.

Recorded conversations below with:

Lily Siegel, curator

Genevieve Villamora, co-owner of Filipino restaurant, Bad Saint

Lisa Page, director of Creative Writing at George Washington University and author of "We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America"

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