Artist Statement

Abstract

Artist Statement Jenifer K Wofford (bio) Happily, I have no quick, one-word answer to the “What kind of art do you make?” question: the questions that provoke my projects necessitate varied approaches, from visual and performance strategies to teaching and curatorial work. My projects often play with notions of difference, hybridity, liminality, and authenticity. I do what I can to make work that is honest, political, absurd, irreverent, and imaginative, employing as many strategies as seem appropriate. Much of my creative logic is governed by the global perspectives of a mixed Filipino American family; a third-culture upbringing in Hong Kong, the uae, and Malaysia; an adulthood in diverse California; and a lifetime of international and intercultural experience. It is also shaped by years as an educator, working with tremendously diverse communities, and by years of learning from innumerable strong female forces around me. Because of these experiences, I am committed to a practice that engages a multiplicity of voices often unheard or under-represented in the arts, with issues of culture and gender often front and center in this practice. Collaboration and camaraderie are integral parts of my practice: my projects often involve friends and strangers in all manner of creatively weird situations. I do not particularly consider myself an artist in isolation: the most satisfying work I have made has involved exchange, sharing, joking, and cooperation. It makes things more relevant, and more fun, immediately. about the work in frontiers The video still Flipflop on a Stick 5 (Conflict) comes from series of five short video studies of the imagined potential uses for the Flipflop on a Stick, a seemingly absurdist object that I found in a marketplace in Quiapo, Manila. In this video I decided that it must be some sort of martial arts weapon and took to battle. [End Page 115] Flor 1977 (Flor and Joey) and Flor 1978 (Waiting at sfo) are illustrations excerpted from a large, six-poster project imagining six years in the life of the fictional Flor Villanueva, a young woman who emigrates from Manila to San Francisco. This graphic novel-as-public-art situates Flor in a variety of settings both in San Francisco and Manila in the 1970s, with captions of her thoughts about both personal and political developments of the era. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig 1. Jenifer K Wofford, Flipflop on a Stick. [End Page 116] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig 2. Jenifer K Wofford, Flor 1977 (Flor and Joey). [End Page 117] Jenifer K Wofford jenifer k wofford is a Filipina American artist and educator. She is also one third of the artist trio Mail Order Brides/m.o.b. Her work plays with notions of cultural difference, hybridity, and authenticity, often with a humorous bent. Wofford was born in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia. She received her bfa from the San Francisco Art Institute and her mfa from uc Berkeley. California exhibitions have included the Berkeley Art Museum, DeYoung Museum, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, with shows further afield at Wing Luke Museum (Seattle), DePaul Museum (Chicago), Silverlens Galleries (Philippines), and Osage (Hong Kong). Copyright © 2016 Frontiers Editorial Collective, Inc.