artifacts of empire
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Artifacts of Empire is a collection that embodies the idea of narratives as both instruments and products of empire and explores how imperialism and capitalism shape the evolution of culture and identity. Unson is particularly interested in the role St. Louis played in America’s overseas expansion at the turn of the century, especially as the host city for the 1904 World’s Fair. The Philippine exhibit at the fair was material evidence of the moment the U.S. chose to become an empire — the reason for its existence being to justify the invasion and occupation of the Philippines. As the city commemorates the fair’s 120th anniversary in 2024, Unson offers this collection as points for reflection regarding this country’s imperial past and how its legacy lives on today in our collective psyche. Her lived experience is a testament to how being indoctrinated in the U.S. in the early 1900's influenced her great grandfather and how that in turn, shaped the next four generations of her family.
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Unson uses published text as structural elements in her art, to upend the literary format into non-linear, visual forms. Language and the written word are particularly germane to this conversation because they were the tools of cultural erasure during the American Occupation of the Philippines.
She recontextualizes words with found and constructed objects, collage, and portrait painting. The resulting work offers counter-stories, in both content and form, to the Western canon, asking us to consider who decides what is remembered, how memory shapes us, and who benefits from the stories that are memorialized. In 100 years, how will our descendants look back from the world that we are manifesting today? Will it be a future that benefits the collective whole instead of a privileged few?
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SELECT WORK
Dressed Cost, 2024
collaboration with Rockie Sharon
aluminum, copper, cotton fabric, dried flowers, moss, plastic
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The terno is the most recognized traditional gown from the Philippines. Here it is formed out of aluminum and copper. Within the sleeves Unson has created a self- portrait looking backward and a portrait of her maternal grandmother, Carmen Narciso Araneta, looking forward. The metal frame encases a spray of dried roses, while moss “grows” along its wires. The dress form is draped with a skirt printed with book pages from the classics. Three hundred plastic army men further embellish the skirt. “Dressed cost” refers to the meat and skeletal portion of an animal compared to its live weight—alluding to the conversion of lives lived into commodities of consumption.
Foundation, 2024
acrylic paint and image transfers on 13 bricks on a bed of sand
At the turn of the twentieth century, clay was extracted from the earth in St. Louis to form the bricks for buildings across America. At the same time, valuable natural resources such as silica sand (and one could argue, people) were extracted from the Philippines, creating the foundation of the U.S. empire. The thirteen portraits of first-generation Filipino Americans in this installation represent the foundation of St. Louis’ thriving present-day Filipino community. The portraits are painted on top of images of newspaper stories about contemporary Filipinos that are transferred onto bricks crafted in the early 1900s. Our elders stand together in a circle, obscured by their initial appearance as bars of gold.
Mementos, 2023
paper, glue, and found objects (silver spoons, ceramic and glass dishes, metal vase, tin can,
stone egg)
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William Taft, governor general of the Philippines in 1904 and future U.S. president, called the World’s Fair “a great influence in completing the pacification of the Philippines.” The fair was meant to win over the American public who opposed the invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation. Understanding souvenirs to be powerful tools that contribute to the enduring memory of the 1904 Fair, Unson uses this form as the canvas on which to re-remember—wrapping fair souvenirs with newspaper headlines of atrocities of the Philippine American War that were deliberately obfuscated by the fair’s bright lights and giant Ferris wheel.