Shiyao Fu
2024
Silicon Foam, EVA Foam Mat
1.5’’ x 60’’ x 48’’
Motherless Tongue is an installation of odd-shaped alphabet letters attempting to squeeze into puzzle tiles. The letters used flexible foam material cast from kids' alphabet floor mats, which indicates the process of language learning. The act of mismatching alphabet letters into odd-shaped ones reflects a sense of displacement. Through this installation, I take a direct yet abstract approach to exploring my relationship with my hometown dialect, a language that I cannot claim as my own mother tongue.
Our first birth is our natal origin in our culture. Our second birth is our move from the familiar to do fieldwork in a far place. The third occurs when we have become comfortable within the other culture, and turn our gaze to our native land. We find the familiar to have become exotic, and see it with new eyes [...] Thrice-born anthropologists are perhaps in the best position to become the “reflexivity”of a culture (Turner, 1978)
Victor Turner used M. N. Srinivas’s concept of “thrice-born” to set the tone for anthropologists. While my first and second births seem intertwined, I am exploring the familiar yet exotic feeling when I look back into my hometown dialect.