CROSSING THE BORDER: BENEATH THE BLUE SKY

Crossing the Border: Beneath the Blue Sky is an installation of fabric flags created by a cyanotype process. The project employs the transparent quality of film and sunlight, and a custom algorithm, to render geometric designs from country flags in a blue tone, capturing the color of the sky.

Inspired by Daniel Buren’s Within and Beyond the Frame (1973) and David Hammons’ African-American Flag (1990), this project examines the connection between myself as an immigrant artist and the artists who created these historic works in NYC. The artwork activates new definitions of original national flags through the notion of crossing borders in our globalized landscape. Through the algorithm and the transparent aspect evoking sunlight, participants are prompted to consider how all people share the same sky and should be treated equally, regardless of their cultural background and identity.

Crossing the Border: Beneath the Blue Sky is one of the three artworks of History in Blue Series.

With History in Blue, I aim to conceptually construct my own “blue period,” reflecting on both my direct experience of immigration and its history. This artwork combines historical media art techniques of blue (blue and white porcelain, blue cyanotypes) and their contexts to explore the history of immigration through three interconnected projects that consider real and imagined landscapes. The three artworks of History in Blue are 1) Sunny Garden in Blue: Stories from the Caribbean to Brooklyn, 2) Returning Dialogue: Fragments of Blue and White Porcelain, and 3) Crossing the Border: Beneath the Blue Sky.