Eye ( i ) Ei is an installation composed of a 2-channel video, 2 metal frames, a drapped textile, a wind machine, and two plaster eye sculptures. Eye ( i ) Ei is a part of the exhibition “Field Within” at the Xhibit Space, 14 July- 14 September 2019, Eschenbachgasse 11, 1010, Vienna.
How did the word the for eye (mata) and king (hari), in my mother tongue, end up meaning sun (matahari) in someone else’s? Fijian anthropologist, Epeli Hau’ofa writes that the pre-colonial world was one “in which people and cultures moved and mingled, unhindered by boundaries of the kind erected much later by imperial powers.” Maritime flows have historically been of central importance in the constitution of cultural identities, evidenced in the way ethno-linguistic groups in the archipelago (of the Philippines) do not map with particular islands, but rather, with particular maritime regions.
The maritime regions I am marrying in this spectral tracing of horizons are Jogjakarta and my homeland of Cebu based on the personhood of Matahari, where the eye becomes king, and “I” (myself), a yellow yolk of egg.
Artists: Abdul Sharif Baruwa, Cana Bilir-Meier, Juliana Borinski, Guillermo Gómez-Peña & Balitronica Gómez (La Pocha Nostra), Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, Stephanie Misa, Érika Ordosgoitti
Curated by: Mariel Rodríguez
Photo Credits: Lisa Rastl & Claudia Sandoval Romero