I love her reimagined traffic barriers. In 2005 Yumi covered concrete traffic barriers with stretch-satin slipcovers and wooden barriers with tiny mirrors (she calls them “Disco Barriers”), leaving them around Houston neighborhoods in conjunction with an installation at Lawndale Art Center. She also made piñata traffic cones, set them up in a parking lot and busted them under her car wheels, sending kids scrambling for butterscotch.“I am interested in recontextualizing how we view authority and fantasy, permissibility and control, surface and substance, the domestic and the institutional, the masculine and the feminine…If those barriers are pretty, how will we reinterpret the spaces they quarantine, demarcate and make inaccessible?” she asks.

 This year she took abandoned shipping pallets from the streets and alleys of New York and inlaid them with mother of pearl patterns typically found on Filipino furniture, before returning the pallets to their original locations.

She’s also created her own ornately carved and inlaid shipping pallets from fine wood. By privileging beauty over functional in a functional object, Yumi explores the distinctions between how we value labor and conversely aesthetics, as well as considering ideas about memory, immigration and displacement.

Another recent project, Yumi carved designer logo stamps from potatoes. Yumi wanted to imitate the Louis Vutton, Dolce & Gabbana and Prada in what she terms “the most democratic printing process possible.” Something about the use of potatoes seems particularly poignant. Potatoes are organic material—they’re biodegradable, and for many of us, easily obtained and expendable. Yet throughout the world, people suffer for the lack of simple sustenance, and potatoes are a particularly nutrient dense food. Of course, some of us in the western world may think that we’re suffering for the lack of our fancy logo-laden products, which we were perhaps able to buy last fashion week. These stamps seem to mock the materialism that propels a thriving industry—that of imitation luxury goods—while acknowledging the “democratic” service the accessibility of these faux handbags provide. Yes America, you can have your logos, even in a recession. (Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus—he lives in Manila and ships direct to Chinatown.)

Share on Tumblr