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BOXES beyond borders

Category: Political

Bringing all of my Life Experiences to the Public Table

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

Rep. Anna Eshoo, CONGRESSWOMAN FROM CALIFORNIA and Laura Deem, ARTIST

Anna Eshoo’s life experiences have helped to shape her into the person she is today and the way that she represents her constituents in Congress. Her role as a parent, daughter, wife, student, teacher, woman, caretaker and friend have all come into play.

The handwritten slips of paper contain Anna’s private thoughts, memories and experiences. These personal topics feed into a “public table”. This public table is a communal meeting place that houses issues, projects and policies with which Anna Eshoo is involved as a Congresswoman.

The objects represent both the private and public world. Combined they weave together an individual narrative of the many hats that we wear, the experiences that accompany them, and the ones we chose to share with the rest of the world.

War Box

Since time began, mothers have nurtured, loved, taught, protected, cherished and raised their babies, then watched them grow to be killed in war or by war. This inevitable cycle will repeat itself for untold generations unless our mothers’ universal plea to Stop The Killing results in WAR NO MORE!

Re:Mapping

When I was asked to create a box for this project, I wanted to use ideas and images representing the spirit behind Women Beyond Borders. I found a 1957 atlas with a world map and an accompanying text, which are very anachronistic relics of the Cold War era. More than 40 years later we have seen a myriad of changes in borders resulting from our late 20th century, capitalist, post-colonial, multi-national, global politics. More importantly, we know only too well the tragedies that have ensued when multitudes of human beings are displaced and dislocated from their homes and homelands.

On this box I attempt to re-map the world to show the arbitrary and contrived nature of geo-political borders. While many countries appear as they are today, some nations no longer exist and others have yet to be established. I have tried to de-contextualize the borders to remind us how they are always in flux. Inside the box is an idealistic and paternalistic text fragment from the atlas, a bittersweet reminder of a 1950’s American dream that has all but collapsed as we approach the year 2000. The text on the lid is my own bit of wishful thinking: Even though boundaries will undoubtedly persist to exist, hopefully they will not continue to prevent us from moving freely across borders.

 

Cancer

In the past
people asked me
sometimes
what is your sign
and I said
cancer
because I was born
on the 6th of July.

Now I got the disease
or the disease got me
and I hate
this word:
cancer.

I lost my hair
I lost my breast
and I may lose
my life-
who knows-to
cancer.

But I am not alone
185,000 women a year
are getting it and
we are all asking why
cancer

Why all the poison
in our food, our water,
our air, what did we
do to nature, where
is the F.D.A.? It is not
only tobacco which is
killing us.  How can we
fight the enemy
cancer?

 

Come on Breathe!

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

Dolores Huerta, SOCIAL ACTIVIST, LABOR LEADER AND CO-FOUNDER OF UNITED FARM WORKERS

Grace Elizabeth Davis, WRITER, MOTHER AND MARATHON RUNNER

These trophies are awards to the plights that we face as women.

Dolores Huerta wanted to help her students who came to class barefoot and hungry. Through her community work she co-founded the United Farm Workers Union. At 76 years old she continues to lecture and lobby for the UFW, a model used by global labor unions as a testimony to the rights of workers.

Grace Davis, writer/runner/mother, known for “Katrina Relief” brought aid to the hurricane victims of New Orleans, the first to use blogging as a medium in disaster relief.

In our endeavors, our lives can be in danger, our pasts can haunt us, our vulnerabilities can be exposed.

Unselfishly, women strive to be all things to everyone; we endure the odds guided by our passion to care for our world families.

Laurie Dolan

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

Laurie Dolan, DIRECTOR OF WASHINGTON STATE GOVERNOR’S EXECUTIVE POLICY OFFICER

Because Laurie had twice run and lost close State Senate races, my first impulse for this project was to create political art that is stark and confrontational in the style of outsider Bible-literalists — using red, black, white, block letters and simple but expressive figures.

Laurie is genuinely engaged in and faithful to the political process, seeing herself as glue, as a relationship builder. Laurie underwent a successful stem cell transplant in July 2003, and her illness and recovery impressed on her how little time we have to touch the world, and how important it is to touch our children. The text on the box runs together and reflects the impact of Laurie’s illness on her life, her desire to touch the world, and the importance of her family.

 

Reverberation: Yuri Kochiyama

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

Yuri Kochiyama, LEGENDARY CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST; CLOSE FRIEND AND ASSOCIATE OF MALCOM X and June Sekiguchi, ARTIST.

I want to represent the effect pivotal events had on Yuri Kochiyama and how her life and work had a ripple effect in turn. Something breaks the surface of awareness and affects a resounding change. The box is the foundation supporting barbed wire which acts not only as the internal framework of concentric ripples reverberating beyond the source, but references important aspects of Yuri’s life: internment and political prisoners.

The box holds a gathering of pebbles that signify the catalyst of change. The ripples are inscribed with quotes, influences, and documentation of her life. I’ve chosen to use text heavily in this piece because the written word has held a place of importance in Yuri’s connection to the world. Light and shadow reflect the intangible far reaching affect she has had.

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.

 

Opportunity Gap

This box purports to show the great disparity of living standards in the United States and the enormous differences in the haves and the have-nots.

In the 1970’s I photographed migrant workers in central Florida. The situation there was not too different from the photographs taken by the Farm Security Administration in the Thirties and the situation is the same today. In one camp far from civilization the workers lived in converted buses with 1 toilet and shower facility for over 70 people. The children did not attend schools as they were too far away. When the government finally closed the camp, they simply moved further into the outback.

Whole families worked the groves, including young children, but that was the only way the families could earn enough for the day.

Contrast this with the luxurious life styles of some today. There is a widening gap between the rich and the poor. As technology dominates the employment field, those with little education are doomed to low paying or no jobs at all. Our society is becoming more stratified economically.

Balkan Dance

This traditional Balkan folk dance slipper carries a box holding the grief and terror of deportation and internment as well as hope for endurance and the end of all exiles- physical, political, cultural and spiritual.

Overflowing

As the world’s population increases at alarming rates, heavy human consumption is producing drastic amounts of waste and garbage. Landfills are overflowing and space for containing our trash is limited. This box represents Earth’s limited available space for containing our waste. By recycling, we can collectively help to prolong the Earth’s beautiful and natural elements.

America is Watching

The images on my box are from a series of relief prints in response to the U.S. Attorney General’s “TIPS” program. The program recommends that citizens keep an eye on one another and then inform the government of any suspicious activity. As disembodied doll eyes peer out from the inside of the box, images of men and women watching in various ways surround the exterior.

Mom, Me, and the Pink Dancers

This work has to do with the cycle of life and where I am in that cycle now. It is a combination of fears–past and present, traumatic experiences—past and present, hopes, dreams, pain and frustration that continue, that I am more or less resigned to endure. It is to honor my mother and her teaching and love for me, my love for her and what each generation of women pass to one another.

The pink dancers were an image I formed from an interview I heard on public radio with young women activists who dress in pink and perform on the sidewalk of urban centers to attract people to engage them in discussions pertaining to social and political issues of the progressive left. I yearned and regretted for a moment that I was not there, was not a pink dancer. But soon saw that they were the next phase, and was glad just that they were there. Yes! to them.

War is still bad, starving children are still bad, and women still have to keep working to stop these things from happening. There is a lot of pain we must carry with us.

My own children (17yrs old & 21yrs old) saw this piece being made. The red stuffing, I told my questioning son, represented blood and tissue. However, it was not bad. Blood is everywhere when you are born. It is a good thing. Blood is life.

Such a small piece, so much to say. Very personal.

I Would Still Like to Have…er…Chewing Gum

The ban of chewing gum a decade ago has caused quite a stir not only in Singapore but internationally too.  Although it may seem to be a trivial act or even unimportant matters in a political dimension, it has nonetheless created some public awareness of how far an average citizen can tolerate this form of authoritarian regime.

 

As a law-abiding citizen of Singapore, I have no choice but to give up one of my favorite habits and life’s little luxury during my younger days.  Nowadays, we can still spot someone chewing gum discreetly in public especially on board of public transport.  It’s not a big crime or anything like that as long as it is disposed properly into the bins.  Although the government has shown a good degree of tolerance, it is still against the law to sell or import chewing gum.

 

I still chew gums that I brought back from overseas and enjoy blowing big bubbles like I used to so; what’s a little law-breaking gonna do to me?

 

Pressing Issues

In the tradition of the found object and the democratic processes of making and distributing art, I have made a mini printing press out of my cedar box. The box is now a stamp with a pad inside the box with pressing issues waiting to be revealed.

• Who controls female fertility?
• What happens to all the women and children who are refugees?
• Can women artists maintain careers into old age?

Therese Kenyon, Australia – Director, Manly Art Gallery from WOMEN BEYOND BORDERS on Vimeo.