[title]

Portrait puppet, sculpture

Materials: acrylic paint, gold thumbtacks, hot glue, chopsticks, styrofoam sphere, one 45 vinyl record, my mother’s handmade fabric masks, ancestral stories, one 1/4 x 32 Inch Unfinished Hardwood Stick, communal care, Long COVID care: stop rest and pace.

Description:

My Gunungan, or as my friend nicknamed it Việt Diasporic DJ post-COVID, began with brainstorming after Shadow Play class last week, I received the idea in my mind to use found objects in my home. My mother sewed fabric masks during March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic first spread in the U.S. and I kept her masks until now. However, the needs for masks have since changed, to K-95s and M-95s and her masks have become less useful. I could not bear to throw them away since she crafted them herself with fabric from our home. I used these masks to make the skirt of the Gunungan. In the Schwartz building on Friday, I ran into Tim, the props director of the my department Performing and Media Arts. He asked what I was up to? And I responded with, “I have to make a puppet this weekend for class. I have ideas for the skirt and hair but I am stuck on what to do for the head and body.” He generously offered to help me construct the core body of my Gunungan – the styrofoam chest and head. He drilled holes into the styrofoam and pieced them together with a wooden stick. When my neighbor picked me up from campus, she asked what I was holding. I told her about my project and asked if we could stop by a store to buy a hot glue gun when she offered to let me borrow hers. I spent the rest of the weekend thinking about my Gunungan, painting, gluing, and puncturing the fabric and jewels together onto the styrofoam body.  The 45 record lays at a 45 degree angle, framing the Gunungan’s head and acts as a cultural twist of the áo dài nón lá, the Vietnamese traditional garment for women and as the DJ in me djing with vinyl. Lastly, I painted the top half of the body with gold and pinned gold pins. I'm currently obsessed with the concept of shininess in grill teeth in my hip-hop research and gold chains in my personal attire. The gold, another tribute of Vietnamese aesthetics from my mother and also hip-hop aesthetics.