RETURNING DIALOGUE: FRAGMENTS OF BLUE AND WHITE PORCELAIN
Returning Dialogue: Fragments of Blue and White Porcelain (Installation View), 2019- (Ongoing), Digital printing transfers on fragments of blue and white porcelain displayed in an archival clamshell box. Archival box: 16 x 27 x 2 inches (each).
Returning Dialogue: Fragments of Blue and White Porcelain (Installation View), 2019- (Ongoing), Digital printing transfers on fragments of blue and white porcelain displayed in an archival clamshell box. Archival box: 16 x 27 x 2 inches.
Returning Dialogue: Fragments of Blue and White Porcelain (Southeast Asia Series), 2019- (Ongoing), Digital printing transfers on fragments of blue and white porcelain displayed in an archival clamshell box.
The overlaid illustration of long beans seen on porcelain fragments no. 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 9 reference a plant cultivar from Africa developed and widely grown in Southeast Asia. Archival box: 16 x 27 x 2 inches.
Returning Dialogue: Fragments of Blue and White Porcelain (Transatlantic Slave Trade Series), 2019- (Ongoing), Digital printing transfers on fragments of blue and white porcelain displayed in an archival clamshell box.
The overlaid illustration of callaloo seen on porcelain fragments no. 1, 5, 10, 11, and 12 reference a plant widely grown in Africa and introduced to the Caribbean as a culinary dish by enslaved Africans through the transatlantic slave trade. Archival box: 16 x 27 x 2 inches.
Returning Dialogue: Fragments of Blue and White Porcelain Series creates a new style of blue and white porcelain referencing both museum collections of this type of ceramic and the history of immigration. For this project, illustrations of people and plant cultivars referencing historical research based on US immigration timelines are overlaid and transferred onto porcelain fragments using a ceramic decal process. The deconstructed porcelain reflects a long multicultural history woven through innovation, trade, and exchange, as well as tracing temporal and physical immigration journeys. The ceramic pieces are displayed with a map key indicating the period and location where each porcelain piece was made.
By interweaving the historical contexts of immigration and the media art technique of blue and white porcelain, this ongoing series of artworks examines different migrations of people and plant cultivars through the US immigration timeline. The next iteration of the Returning Dialogue Series further unpacks the stories of people and plants in transition, focusing on the migration of plants through the Transatlantic Slave Trade—a forced migration considered the first system of globalization. The series connects to Sunny Garden in Blue via the theme of translocation between different continents.
Returning Dialogue: Fragments of Blue and White Porcelain is one of the three artworks of History in Blue.
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.
