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| Sleeping and working from the tatami floor in Kamakura, Japan. |
Café Kiss of the World is a room with a door curtain, some clocks, photographs, poems, a jigsaw puzzle, and a light breeze. It is an installation that comes out of years of calling different places home, seeing friends in all different parts of the world and being transported back momentarily to a place of familiarity no matter how foreign the circumstances. It revolves around years of being left behind and feeling stagnant and status quo, years of leaving and feeling left out and like things were going too fast. It comes from a place of years of travelling and not being noticed, years of staying still and being charismatic without even trying, years of trying too hard. It comes from years of experience going back and forth between the motherland and home, some visits filled with romanticism about tradition, history, and family, others filled with attitudes of progress, linguistic superiority, and fashion forwardness. Expectations crashing every time. It comes from a place of being around unknown languages, from gestures and eye contact, shared space and a helping hand, from being invisible, normal, and repulsive, to being exceptional, magnetic, and reliable. And in this eye of this storm of relativity things are slow, stable, and calm, caring and expansive, and whispering lightly over and over the promise of June Jordan's words, 'the actual kiss of the world, everywhere.'
Wed, Dec 15, 11:18am, Kamakura, Japan
