This Land is Your Land
at Pitzer College, Thru Nov. 20
A disparate cluster of sounds—the metallic clanking of a pulley knocking repeatedly against an empty flagpole, the fly-by of a military jet and the urgent warning signal and train crescendo of a railroad crossing—accompany video projections in Nuttaphol Ma’s installation, part of Pitzer’s “Emerging Artist” series. The pungent and surprisingly sweet odor of steer manure and incense permeates the gallery. The auditory and olfactory din assaults the senses and erodes concentration: Ma’s installation alludes to domestic internment camps for detained Japanese Americans during the Second World War. The sensory saturation in this work simulates the disorientation that confronts the newly arrived; it is an encompassing experience, the cultural ground for new immigrants. Ma’s installation provides tactile pleasures in objects which belie the sensory delight they convey. A meticulously detailed fence—a reference to both the internment camp and a verse from Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land”—fashioned from salvaged wood, with intensely colored threads woven through small drilled holes and geometric designs carefully inscribed with a miter saw, runs diagonally through the gallery. The fence slats stand embedded in cinderblocks filled with a mixture of soil and manure, and on the opposite wall, a printed verse from Guthrie’s song conveys misgivings about the fence. Like a reflecting pool, an array of fluttering Mylar rectangles hanging on the wall casts light into the corner in little eddies and swirls. Like a parable, Ma’s work begins with a specific narrative, and the ramifications become universal.
“This Land is Your Land” by Nuttaphol Ma (Emerging Artist Series #3) at the Lenzer Family Art Gallery at Pitzer College, 1050 N. Mills Ave., Claremont, (909) 607-3143; www.pitzer.edu /artgalleries. Thru Nov. 20. Free.
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