Western University MFA Thesis Exhibition, Hosted by Zalucky Contemporary, 2020
Date: August 14 - 22, 2020

“Rather, the return to a denied heritage allows one to start again with different re-departures, different pauses, different arrivals.” —Trinh T. Minh-Ha, “Elsewhere, Within Here”

“It is no accident, Ma, that the comma resembles a fetus—that curve of continuation. We were all once inside our mothers, saying, with our entire curved and silent selves, more, more, more. I want to insist that our being alive is beautiful enough to be worthy of replication. And so what? So what if all I ever made of my life was more of it?”
—Ocean Vuong. “On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous.”

Fusing genres such as autobiography, fiction, popular media, and dreams, ‘still, unfolding’ starts from Laruan’s experience of Filipino migration to offer other possible notions of remembering and collecting, especially by people with broken, forgotten, or lost histories. Moments, no matter how small, leave hints of existence—as long as there is always movement, even from the abandoned, forgotten, and omitted. 

To be still is to not move nor make a sound. It is quiet. Quiet has somehow meant non-existence. There is movement in the stillness, or rather there is no movement without stillness. A single shot, static. Yet this circulates the most. Nevertheless. “Nevertheless I rise,” said Maya Angelou or something. And until now. And until now. 

Must we always unfold from? Can you unfold to?

A reveal, in sequence. To spread, to straighten. 

There is a reveal, always. Even folding into oneself is something. Even without sound or movement, time make itself known. Like how you can never straighten a folded paper. Time gathers. It is gathered. 

A comma joins what is next to come.