fifi rae
©2024
I SWEAR I WAS HERE. I still am. statement
My installation “I SWEAR I WAS HERE. I still am.” (2025) investigates the human obsession to prove one’s existence, claim and reclaim a space, and make a space into a place. I have been fascinated by graffiti and tagging places to physically claim one’s presence in that specific place. These tags are like fingerprints, a marker of one’s identity, an “I was here” diary. The act of carving into existence and printing the words “I SWEAR I WAS HERE” over and over again was physically tiring but solidifying and cathartic at the same time. Through the physical and literal repetition of manually and forcefully printing a statement, a claim, my obsession became affirmation. I printed these words enough times to feel like they were true. I spent significant time in this space, so my presence will be felt.
The footprints are also signifiers of past human presence throughout this space. I rolled ink onto my old shoes that I have walked all over in. Human existence and impact is everywhere, and footprints can be unintentionally or intentionally left behind. Footprints as the earliest form of printmaking imply a sense of permanence, like one’s digital footprint or the formation of desired paths, even if it is not visible, the impact is always there. I wanted to track my arbitrary movement and steps as I walked and worked in this space. Every footprint became a ghost print speaking to the ghosts and pasts that have once occupied this space.
The spray-painted chairs and stencils represent different chairs that belong to spaces I have made places throughout my life, like the art building, my current apartment, my grandparents’ home, and my home in L.A. When I asked people how they make a space a place, many people said adding furniture. I thought of my obsession with chairs as furniture that implies a resting place and a physical occupation of space but that can also be easily moved around in and out of other places. I wanted to immortalize the presence of these chairs, commemorate their temporary quality, and their implications of human bodies resting on them.
When I make a space into a place, I decorate the walls with various images and memorabilia I have accumulated over time. The photos I put in the installation are found photos of places strangers took photos of, proving they were there. I am fascinated by who took these photos, why they gave them away, and how these photos have likely outlived their photographers. The only photos that have people in them, like an accidental finger in the corner or a stranger’s grave, are on the wall with the text “I WAS.”
The light in the corner of the space never turns off, even when no one is physically there. I was reminded of a ghost light, a myth in theatre where a light is left on all night on-stage for all the ghosts of those who have performed on that stage before. I saw these ghosts in the peeling paint, stains, and holes in the space.
My installation allowed me to temporarily reclaim a space and resist an infrastructure that was not built to include people like me. I learned the term “glitchfrastructure” from artist Cannupa Hanska Luger. A glitch implies an error or malfunction in a system, suggesting that this system is not working the way it should. The infrastructures and systems in place stemming from and perpetuating white-settler colonialism are not made to work for people of color. Glitches are acts of resistance that prove and remind us of the inherent flaws in the infrastructure. My tag is the word “glitch” because I tag spaces where my sole existence in them is an act of resistance and reclamation. When I thought about the location of this project space, a white cube in the sculpture yard with restricted access in the Art and Anthropology Building next to the Hearst Anthropology Museum on stolen Ohlone Land, I immediately thought about what it means to occupy this space and walk in it, and who has walked through it before. “I SWEAR I WAS HERE” acts as a political statement of resistance and an acknowledgment of who was here before. I also asked people who walked inside this space to leave their tags and proof of existence on the walls, engaging with the potentially uncomfortable feeling of writing over someone else’s work and claiming a part of someone else’s made place.
Lastly, while making this installation, I knew it would only be mine for a couple of weeks, on display for three days, and then given to the next person. It is better that my time in this space was temporary, that I was not trying to own it. Ownership of space and seeking permanence in it have been the causes of genocides, mass displacements, wars, and much more. I embraced the nomadic and temporary approach where I pass down this space to another person, letting them make it their place. The only physical proof I have that I ever existed in this space is the documentation I took. However, when painting over my work with white paint, my blue ink mixed with it, creating blue paint. Temporary yet stubborn, my presence will forever remain a layer of blue ink buried under white paint in this space, always here.