Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.
Joan Ling, INNOVATOR AND ADVOCATE FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA and Ann Lindbeck, ARTIST
Contents of Trunk:
A letter ordering lumber by Pablo Neruda
Accordian landscape
Key to a China trunk
Map of California
Map of China
Architectural drawing
I collect “how to” illustrations, the drawings that come on packages that show you how to use the product. For this box, I made three scrolls with my copies of those illustrations. I used instructional drawings from health books, dental floss, box cutters, screwdrivers,chopsticks and Hi-8 tapes. They are packed tightly inside the box, a representation of the jumble of rules.
Contemporary Icons, Portraits/collages of persons crossing my (Life) way- where I feel a Vision- a Feu Sacre to a task- a goal they create herself……
If I could place history on a light box
and make its face transparent
I could illuminate its unseen structure
upon which its strength depends.
This is a collaborative effort by mail/email, having started in December 2000 and will conclude December 2002. It asks participants to contribute a recipe from their mothers. The word recipe is open to interpretations: memories/ remedies/ conversations that occur in the kitchen/ contents of a pre-packed lunch/ etc. This is a simple project, based on a chain of words – women/ mothers/ cooking/ kitchen – used within a simplistic context of a stereotype, there are many distinct and different identities. In a kitchen, each woman develops multiple and complex ways to deal with the role of mother cooking. This role (one associated with sugar-coated sentiments) is also the same role that allows a woman (who may have been defaulted into the kitchen) some measures of control over her family. The kitchen can be a very powerful or oppressive place depending on the woman occupying it. I would like to think that every mother occupied it differently. I hope that this project (a small and incomplete record of their many facets) may serve as a humble but deserving tribute to all our mothers. And if it fails to do that, it is at least, a collection of recipes to some very delicious and precious dishes.
The Women's Voices: Ye Shu Fang from WOMEN BEYOND BORDERS on Vimeo.
