The swamp heron nests among the alligator, sacrificing an occasional chick from above in exchange for its watchful protection.
THE HAZARDOUS CROWNING FAILURE OF MIMICRY (DECOY SERIES) is a mixed-media installation to ward away colonial ideological narratives while calling close self-determination and solidarity among communities of color.
Alligator and bird decoys, objects used to deter unwanted animal predators, exist together here in a state of co-protection. Referencing symbiotic relationships between predator and prey in the Floridian landscape where the artist is from, the artwork places the viewer as both intruder and watchful defender of a crowning nest, made of plastic safety mesh fencing, suspended above the decoys. As the bright, orange, haloing nest precariously sways in fan-generated wind, the artwork positions its own farcical mimicry of nature in the form of mass-manufactured decoys and fans—along with its hi-visibility visual language of materials that demarcate temporary human-made boundaries— as the failure of colonial mimicry (Bhabba, 1984, as cited in Eng and Han, 2000) that has been historically imposed upon Asian American and other minoritized communities in the deceitful entrapments of stereotype, assimilation, amnesia, mis-visibility, and the ideal of whiteness.
Created for “Lost Objects” at CTRL+SHFT Collective Gallery. Thank you very much to curators Tracy Ren and Jess Young.
THE HAZARDOUS CROWNING FAILURE OF MIMICRY (DECOY SERIES) (2020), Alligator and heron bird decoys, orange safety mesh fencing, hazard tape, fan, zip ties, and wire. Documented by Kristen Brehmer and Johnny Galvan.