“Taste of your hometown kicking on the back of my teeth” is an installation inspired by a passage from Christoforo Borri, a Portuguese Jesuit who lived in 17th century Vietnam, describing his time at a banquet and noticing a sugarcane vessel at each table center to dispose of the season’s produce, flesh and bones. Sugarcane scraps are precariously pinned together to stand in for our complex personal histories, beliefs, and values. Moving between native and host cultures, choices of what we discard, adapt, separate, or integrate reveal or hide who we are. This constant negotiation confronts how we reconstruct our sense of estrangement and reconciliation.
The taste of your hometown still kicking on the back of my teeth, 2025
24 x 24 x 72 in
Sugarcane, pins, monofilament