The Name Game

A sound­track was cre­ated for the exhi­bi­tion.

We are given a birth name, which can remain present after our death; this of course, depends upon the legacy we leave behind.

Some­times soci­ety births us into a name or a clan, which dimin­ishes our indi­vid­u­al­ity, since its per­cep­tion or rep­u­ta­tion cre­ates a sen­tenced iden­tity.

Some peo­ple believe that our name sets pat­terns for our lifeís jour­ney through the energy or res­o­nance it pro­duces when pro­nounced and pro­jected into the uni­verse.

Today, we com­mer­cial­ize a name to cre­ate a long­ing for own­er­ship. It can be used as a sym­bol to denote sta­tus, or an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion marker that peo­ple dis­play with pride, since it sig­ni­fies, some type of cachet that they want oth­ers to asso­ciate them with. But often, the essence or gov­er­nance behind the name becomes irrel­e­vant and ignored because it is more impor­tant to pos­sess and show that you belong to the group that cov­ets the name.

I am using my name not only as an iconic ref­er­ence, but also as a generic shape to cre­ate art­work that is derived from the for-men­tioned notions. By play­fully repeat­ing and plac­ing my name within an arena of pat­terned imagery, it looses its sig­nif­i­cance as “name”; instead, it becomes an iden­ti­fi­able form and part of the visual field. It is now inter­preted as a shape, like a human sil­hou­ette would be in fig­u­ra­tive paint­ing.

The com­puter-gen­er­ated illus­tra­tions are placed against a color-drenched back­ground to reflect or com­pli­ment the imagery that is placed within its restric­tions.

As a way to pro­voke, and to exploit my name’s rep­u­ta­tion, as an art form, the work reveals, like a sig­na­ture hand­bag, promi­nence to its owner. I am cap­i­tal­iz­ing on my name’s his­tor­i­cal emi­nence, as I con­tinue to stake my own claim.