Stranger in My Bahay

I was inspired by my experiences in grade school.  I moved to the United States knowing very little English.  I learned English from watching Sesame Street and cartoons.  We moved to North Carolina where I started school a year later than everyone else.  I was acutely aware that socially my mother and I were different, by how we talked and how we looked.  People spoke slower and louder to us.  I often felt belittled and ashamed to open my mouth and be heard.

I chose chairs that are reminiscent of object found in institutional learning and positioned them to encourage conversation between two people.  The chairs are enclosed in a bamboo structure that resembles a bahay cubo, a simple bamboo home found in the Philippines.

From the outside viewers have a voyeuristic view of a conversation in progress.  Not seeing the faces and hearing the muffled voices inside.

On the inside, the room is lined with mirrored mylar walls.  In these chairs you are surrounded by your own image, above, beside and in front of you.  A mirrored panel juts out from the adjacent gallery wall dividing the space in the hut so that the viewer sees half of their image imposed over the view of the other person across from them.  The two images make one whole person.

Regardless of who sits across from you, I want the viewer to face the thought that there is a commonality.  We are all the same.  Deserving of respect and capable of feeling insecurity.