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BOXES beyond borders

Category: Nationalism

Bali Spirit

The box is covered in a black and white check cloth which together with the red thread gives us the following: red, white and black, together with a Chinese coin as used in balinese traditions.

The significance is:

The cloth covering the box is a symbol of this world in which there are always two opposites, for example: day/night; good/evil; rich/poor; etc.

The round coin with a hole signifies that life is never ending and the world is always turning.

The three colours represent the three great Gods called “have the meaning: dengan adanya TRI MURTI. Each of these three Gods have their own characteristics, which are:

– Dewa Brahma is represented by fire which is a creative force. Everything in nature is represented by the red colour.

– Dewa Wisnu the God of water, protects the contents of our natural world and His colour is black

– Dewa Siwa, the Wind, is the Destroyer, whose colour is white.

 

Mother Ireland

This box as I first saw it started off as a “box nichili”, the more I analyzed it the more vague it became. But as I admired the perfect symmetry and beauty of this innocuous little box, we developed a very strong bond, and I knew I would be very loathe to part with it. It was this bonding that inspired my theme.

Mother Ireland bore her children in the knowledge that emigration was inevitable. The egg represents the womb, with the never to be severed umbilical cords spreading out to all parts of the world and generation after generation respecting and remembering their roots.

I shall never forget you my “bosca bag”, and I sincerely hope wheresoever your sojourn takes you, you will be my “box popoli”, “vox humana”.

Slan agus beannacht my little wooden friend.

 

Radical Profiling

Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.

Joan Takayama-Ogawa (artist) and Elaine Tajima (CEO, founder at Tajima Creative)

We live in times of war, where racial profiling threatens the freedom of Arab Americans. By transforming this wooden box into a shrine representing my family’s internment in Japanese American relocation camps, I hope that racial profiling will not happen again.

Symbols of the highest decorated American 442 Regimental Combat Unit, the luggage tags with family numbers for the Takayama and Ogawas, rotate around the box symbolically, tied with barbed wire. Along the perimeter of the black tray, a plant revered by Japanese Americans, connects with barbed wire symbolizing their incarceration. A gold crane perched on a post, represents the Hiroshima bomb.

Thirty-seven last names along the edge of the tray represent hundreds of my family members who were incarcerated during World War II, remembering freedom is fragile, and racial profiling is intolerable.

 

El Voto

This is a memorial to all in my country, Guatemala, who have never received a proper burial, and were not only insanely murdered by the army of their own country, but then piled up in clandestine cemeteries, so that their loved ones could never come and be with them.  

And the epitaph (THE WISH) reads as follows:

Oh! Please give us a tomb!
a tomb for our souls,
for our poor bodies,
so sore
and tough
from that volcanic lime!

We plead you,
we implore you, dear God, dear people,
dear brothers,
little brothers and little sisters,
give us a tomb,
a safe tomb,
with a shroud made of sweetness,
a place to console us,
a nice place,
to erase the infamy,
a beautiful tomb,
for us!

 

Our House, Our Home

I am sure that you would be attracted by the beautiful landscape of the Vietnamese countryside. The lush, expansive fields spread wide and the rivers flow gently into the silent sunset.

There is one thing that is so much a part of our lives…the thatch-roofed cottage.  No matter where we live, we conjure up images of our cottages when we get homesick.  They are remnants left behind by our ancestors from a long time ago. They are features of natural beauty of the Vietnamese countryside. Do you know that although they are made of simple, natural materials such as different types of bamboo and palm leaves, they have covered us during rainy and sunny seasons.  Some of the houses are built on stilts to protect us against floods and the attack of the wild animals in the night.

Seeing is believing, so we hope that you will come to my country, if only once to see the cottages. You will love them as we do.

Coffer Nephesh

The box, covered with lead, contains the soil of Israel. The phrase coffer nephesh in Hebrew, refers to ransom. Literally the word coffer means ransom and the word nephesh means soul.

COFFER: Like all objects whose essential quality is that of containing, it sometimes acquires the symbolic character of a heart, the brain or the maternal womb. The heart, the first of these meanings, is a figure characteristic of the symbolism of Romanesque art.

In a broader sense, receptacles which can be closed up have, from the earliest times, represented all things that may hold secrets, such as the Ark of the Covenant of the Hebrews, or Pandora’s box.

(J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, New York)

Untitled

Green, yellow and blue are the colors of our flag. Rwanda, a nation recovering from the blood shed of man. The red doom is the symbol of Genocide and the white cross with the bleeding heart of Jesus, who sacrificed that Rwanda be made clean, symbolized by the white cross.

Yellow is sunshine, hope for Rwanda. Green is life and growth and blue is reconciliation, possible only though the blood of Jesus.

Island of Many Pleasures

Welcome to Singapore, truly inspiring city where East meets West.  A Country with a unique array of rich ethnic cultures.  A vibrant city with many exotic, exciting and extraordinary attractions for visitors. Visitors should be able to feel the spirit of harmonious Singaporean living together as ONE UNITED PEOPLE REGARDLESS OF RACE, LANGUAGE OR RELIGION. Let the World be UNITED like Singapore and there shall be PEACE & HARMONY.