Laurus Myth
Laurus Myth
PAINTINGS
SOCIAL MAGIC
SCULPTURES
The Shop of
Unsolved Ancestry
Mixed Media
8' x 10' x 5'
2017
The Shop of Unsolved Ancestry is an interactive pop-up that engages participants to share, receive, and pass on a piece of their identity. "Record a memory from a family elder"; "Mark the landscape you call home"; or "Ask someone near your to define what is valuable". Participants answer these prompts in writing, on a map, or through a recording device. The exhibit expands upon the conversation of exchange. By creating conversation and offering participants a gift in the form of handmade paper, embedded with a seed, the work lives on physically when the seed is planted, and in the mind when the memory sprouts.
How can the seed be a metaphor for knowledge or experience, and how can that become a form of currency?
Cork cut into shapes that depict landscapes of our earth. Grasslands, ocean, volcanic, jungle, forests and even plains are some of the option for us to reroute our concepts of identity. Home is not always where you are from, but it is always tied to the land.
The Shop of Unsolved Ancestry at SFAI MFA Exhibition 2017
A short quote or saying from an elder in your family. Storytelling has long guided traditions and rites of passage for many peoples family and heritage. This interaction invites the collective stories to be heard and told.
Each leaf asks a participant to ask someone else- the question, and record their answer. Thus engaging providing a chance to learn about someone near you.
Working on this project for over six months, many changes happened. The first concept is completely shifted, and the third rendition is what remains. Throughout this process, I have come to define Ancestry not by a cultural tradition or genetic difference but by the oldest rituals we share. By communicating with each other and engaging in our landscape, we can address the blanks in our
ancestral past to reshape our identity in the present?
The Old Mint in San Francisco
May 18th-21st 2017
for the SFAI Masters of Fine Arts Exhibition
SubZERO Street Faire, San Jose, California
June 2-3, 2017
Jazzfest San Jose, 2018