DRAWING TRIANGLES is a collaboration between Sit Weng San and Colomba Cruz Elton, a photo series of gestures performing migratory experiences. This project emerged from conversations they had as housemates living in Los Angeles, coming from two very different cultures; Singapore and Chile.
Through globalisation and the ease of movement of people, goods and culture, geographical boundaries are continually being broken down, However, becoming ever more prevalent are the boundaries constructed by ideas of nationhood, economics, power and race. San and Colomba seek to examine these boundaries, both imaginary and tangible, and the effect that they have on them as subjects of displacement. While living in the USA, they have a possibility of exploring their own cultures from an external perspective, while their homes are both absent and invisible.
Los Angeles, a city with its own charged history, becomes the stage for their work – within its myriad of changing landscapes and ethnologically diverse streets they search for places that remind them of home. For each photograph in the series, one of the two artists performs a re-imagining from a snippet of her own history, memory, experience or re-creations of recent events that occurred at home in their absence. The other artist frames the performance through the lens of the camera, not only documenting the act but re-framing it according to her own cultural imagination and subjective understanding. By interchanging the role of performer and photographer, inevitably the camera becomes a mediator of multiple fragmented interpretations and expressions of the artists, which converge within a time and space. The lens through which they view their experiences is informed by where they come from and often, how they identify themselves in relation to others.
The photographs become a language of listening, imagining and amalgamating, as well as a catalyst to the texts that accompany them. The texts are two voices that come through the reflection of the specific photograph; they in turn give context to the images, bringing out what is lost in translation and guided through the illustrations that act as a mapping tool.
DRAWING TRIANGLES is a result of a repeated process of de-construction and reconstruction of interpreted fragments. Memories of their homes in Singapore and Chile become intertwined with representations of Los Angeles. By creating mythologies that fail to provide a singular point of view they are able to gain perspective on the places that they come from. They also propose multiple imaginative realities of what could be, liberating the space where conflicting ideologies, race and national consciousnesses co-exist.