...allí donde flota mi cuerpo entre los equilibrios contrarios
... there, where my body floats between contrary equilibriums
from "Poema doble del lago Edem" by Federico García Lorca

...like clouds

Artist's Statement: The Fingerprint Project

I come from a long line of migrators: my mother came from Cuba and my father from China. I was born in the U.S., but float, as Federico García Lorca puts it, "between contrary equilibriums." I find myself in the odd position of inhabiting three cultures, yet also arguably not claimed fully by any one of them.

My series of installations, called The Fingerprint Project, uses Lorca's poem as a starting point, drawing as well on the Buddhist concept of interdependent arising which basically asserts that what we experience as reality is really a co-creative experience depending entirely on everyone and everything ’s constant participation. The work focuses on how those inextricable linkages function in the context of individual and group dynamics.

These installations link the ideas of personal migration (and identity) and interdependence. They result from a longer process that begins by collecting molds of friends' fingertips, casting them in wax and mounting them in patterns mimicking migratory patterns (e.g., how birds flock, insects swarm, or animals move in herds) on simple light blue fields painted directly on the wall. Shadows are then drawn in with sumi-ink and powdered graphite. The result is a space in which it is difficult to tell what floats above and what is painted on to the wall, a space in which the co-creative acts of relationships, migration, and ultimately reality all float in the nebulous area of imminence.

Katarina Wong