2017-2018

Media: Chromogenic color print made by direct sunlight, Executive Order 9066 Poster, Everyday Objects

Location: Hillyer Art Space(AI&A at Hillyer) in DC. Exhibiting with Infertile American Dream

Only What We Can Carry is a series of 80+ Contact C-Prints of Japanese Internment Camp (Civilian Exclusion Orders) posters exposed with various everyday objects. These everyday objects represent what I would bring with me if I had one day to gather my belongings. This poster became a symbol of bigotry and paranoia towards a specific group of people, and it echoes in these times where these same prejudices have reemerged for another group of people. Denial and misjudgment lead by blinded authority is a phenomenon close to what we have been witnessing in recent political climates.

In the past, it may once have been a set of treasured letters brought to the camp during WWll. In these times, it could be a photo-filled cellphone or a laptop. But the suffocating decision of choosing between items of meaning and use to carry with you, or leave behind, must be the same. These objects, and these reaching gestures are all exposed with the poster, radiating through the C-prints like X-rays. They are juxtaposed in together as a warning, a warning that bridges the mistakes of the past with our time in the present.

Art Review on the Washing Post (Physical copy/January 14th) on the solo exhibition at the Hillyer Art Space in DC