From Ground Up

From Ground Up explores the complexities of diasporic Filipino-American identity through material disobedience, examining three materials in particular: sugar, steel, and crochet thread. This work investigates each material and their relative histories, combining material history and theory with family and personal histories, and concludes with analyzing the new generated space. The first material–sugar–is intertwined with the US colonization of the Philippines, mimicking the American idea of commodifying and othering the Asian body. Sugar sits at the center of desire and damage narratives: it is sweet, decorative, and celebratory, but it is extracted at the expense of land and labor exploitation. This duality parallels the historical ties to the familial: sugar has catalyzed displacement and resentment on my father’s side, but was a source of livelihood and community on my mother’s side. The second material–steel–references reinforced concrete architecture imported from the US in an attempt to sterilize native Filipino housing. The third material–crochet thread–holds a history of craft tradition, ornamentation, and homemaking, passed down to me by my mother, who learned from other women in the family. All three of these materials are connected to damage-centered narratives of colonization, exploitation, and erasure. Though this perspective is important, communities are not solely defined by the damage others have caused. The practice of material disobedience–or the act of misusing materials to queer an object–subverts preconceived knowledge of material and form, gained over time from imposed colonial narratives. The misuse of these three materials–sugar cast into cinder blocks, rusted steel as ornamentation, and crochet thread as a building material–complicates the ontology of each object. These misused materials transcend categorization, addressing their loaded colonial histories while also collapsing ideas of their original form and function. With the combination of these materials, memories, and modes of knowledge, From Ground Up creates a hybrid space that builds on top of learned traditions, centers selfhood and desire in the process, and creates an entirely new space.

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