Jasmin Werner
Hauling
May 28 - June 16, 2023
Disneyland Paris
6 Hickey St Ardross
Perth/Boorloo, Australia
Images courtesy the artist and Disneyland Paris.In recent years, time and again, Jasmin Werner has returned to Dr Earvin
Charles B. Cabalquinto's [1] research
that looks at how Filipino migrants maintain contact, with the use of digital
communication, to family
members and friends left behind in the Philippines. His studies are based on
looking at Filipino workers in Australia,
who form the fifth largest group of migrants in the country. David Attwood's request to exhibit at Disneyland Paris,
Perth therefore interested her in response to this context.
Under the name Balikbayan Box, Overseas Filipino Workers have been sending several million parcels a
year to their home country since 1973 to maintain a physical as well as
emotional connection with their family. For
the sculptural arrangements, first shown in Cologne, Werner invited her mother to select objects for a fictitious
Balikbayan Box. What is intended by the sender as a gesture of affection and care simultaneously brings
out an ambivalent sense of guilt towards the home left behind. The stacked architecture of the sculptures also points
to a fundamental relationship
of dependence that ensures the continuity of any relationship. [2] By proxy, like a Balikbayan box, Attwood recreated
the work self-supporting II (selection Juanita Acupan-Werner), 2023 which is surrounded by the wall piece Employment
Piece, 2023 showing current job
opportunities in Australia for Filipinos published on the website of the
Department of Migrant
Workers of the Republic of the Philippines.
[1] Dr Earvin Charles B. Cabalquinto is a Senior Lecturer in the School of
Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University, Melbourne. His research expertise lies at the intersections of
digital media, (im)mobilities and migration. More specifically, he is interested
in examining the role of mobile
devices and networked communication platforms in engendering and undermining
transnational relationships,
mediated intimacies, caregiving at a distance, crisis communication, and
homeland linkages. His current project explores the
digital divide in a transnational and digital context. More specifically, he
centres the migrant's home as a critical site to examine a production and negotiation of the digital exclusion in a rapidly
changing global and networked world.
[2] Susanne Mierzwiak from the press release for the group exhibition
Interior Acts at Galerie Clages, in Cologne, 2023