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Crosscurrents

When you're building a wall just to destroy it, make it out of piñatas

Courtesy Southern Exposure

Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik is an artist, chef and educator. Her artwork often uses food to celebrate and investigate culture and identity, especially around people of color and immigrant communities.  

While much of Bhaumik’s work has been about bringing people together, her newest art installation focuses on an idea meant to keep people apart - Trump’s proposed wall between the United States and Mexico. At her show, Estamos Contra El Muro, or We Are Against the Wall, up now at Southern Exposure gallery in San Francisco, Bhaumik has put up a wall made of cinder-block-shaped piñatas.

BHAUMIK: The piñata for me is this perfect form, because it exists to be destroyed. So if I'm going to build something that I don't think should even exist in the first place, you've got to build it out of something not meant to last.

Bhaumik's exhibit Estamos contra elmuro, or, We Are Against the Wall, is up until Saturday, October 15th, when Southern Exposure will invite people to come destroy it.

 

Click the audio player above to hear the full interview.

 

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Crosscurrents Sights & Sounds
Jen Chien was the managing editor for Crosscurrents and KALW News from 2016 to 2018. She has been a contributor to All Things Considered, Radio Netherlands Worldwide, BBC/PRI’s The World, Making Contact, SF Public Press, East Bay Express, New America Media, and KPFA in Berkeley, where she took part in the First Voice Apprenticeship Program. She is the recipient of the 2013 Outstanding Emerging Journalist Award from the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California. She holds a BA in American Studies from Smith College, and an MA in Interdisciplinary Performance from New College of California. Before entering the field of journalism, she had a successful career as a professional dance and theater artist, teacher, and massage therapist.