fifi rae
©2024
Fool’s Gold (2024) is a mixed-media installation exploring belonging, ghosts, memories, and the color blue. It includes a drawing, hanging fabric with a cyanotype silhouette, a video projection with sound, and a collaged chair.
“Was I the only one born to be blue?” Submarine by L’Impératrice
The drawing carefully reconstructs a childhood photo of my mother, grandmother, and myself eating melon at a restaurant. When I eat out with my family, I feel more aware of how I am the only Asian person, except for my sister, at a table of white people, and I never fully feel like I belong. As a kid, I never felt like this, but now at family dinners, I want to blend in with my family but worry I blend in with the blue fabric of the tablecloth or the clothes of strangers.
The Ghost Has No Home by Cocteau Twins and Harold Budd
I am fascinated by ghosts for they too do not fully belong in any space. They can freely move beyond space and time but their existence needs to be proven. They are echoes, memories, and glitches. The hanging fabric embodies a ghost. A cyanotype silhouette of myself sitting in the blue chair is on a layer of fabric. When standing behind the projector and facing the drawing, the cyanotype ghost is subtle yet always present. It is in the video, the physical chair, the empty seat at the dinner table, but simultaneously far removed from everything like a shadow.
“Ten years or ten moments ago reflected in my eyes or floating behind yours,” True Blue Interlude by Magdalena Bay
The video and audio honor my family and childhood and mourn this innocence and closeness. The palimpsest of home videos layered with old photos or recent videos and voicemails with the voices from these voices, combine the past and present and overlap memories and histories. These videos and memories also represent ghosts, echoes, and murmurs that will always linger.
Love from the Other Side by L’Impératrice
The sound gave the people who sat down a closer insight into the memories of my family, putting voices to their faces in an intimate, one-on-one experience. The sound has a sense of time and aging, beginning with hellos and ending with goodbyes; however, the videos freeze, merge, and distort time. The memories and people in them are bound to fade but only become more valuable, and perhaps just a little bluer.
“I can hear all the voices in my ear, I can see all the shadows following me,” Blue Butterfly by yeule
The collaged chair manipulates the interaction between people and spaces and explores the privilege of occupying and freely navigating spaces without thinking twice about belonging or being watched and judged. This chair, taken out of context and transformed into more than a piece of furniture, makes them ask themselves if they can sit in it. This second-guessing comes with identifying as a person of color, in between, neither and both, part of and estranged from. The headphones on the chair also make clear that people are encouraged to sit in it and sit with the potential discomfort of becoming part of a piece they do not belong in.
Silhouette by Pastel Ghost
When people sit in the chair their silhouettes are cast onto the drawing, taking the open seat at the table. They become ghosts, not fully at the dinner table but now in a space for empathy. Their silhouettes obstruct their view of the video. The projection on their back or face makes them part of the video, a visitor, a guest, or another ghost in these memories.
“Time is time and time and time again,” Life is by Jessica Pratt
The title of this installation, Fool’s Gold, refers to the blue gemstone lapis lazuli that contains the mineral pyrite, nicknamed “fool’s gold” as it was often mistaken for real gold. Lapis lazuli was used to make ultramarine blue, the color of “the starry sky.” Pyrite bears the name of an imposter and fraud, but it is integral to lapis lazuli’s value as a globally traded and cherished material carrying multiple histories and futures. Lapis lazuli has lived many lives, across different times, places, and cultures, and perhaps “fool’s gold” is just a visitor, half-present, half-wanted, a ghost for every life.