Joke: An Englishman, a Cuban, a Japanese man and a Pakistani were all on a train. The Cuban threw a fine Havana cigar out the window. When he was asked why, he replied: "They are ten a penny in my country." The Japanese man threw an expensive Nikon camera out of the carriage, adding: "These are ten a penny in my country." The Englishman then picked up the Pakistani and threw him out of the train window. When the other travelers asked him to account for his actions, he said: "They are ten a penny in my country." 1
My work uses humor to activate repressed impulses, disrupt convention, and explore power relations in terms of gender and sexuality, as well as racial and cultural identities. Within the videos, I often take the role of a harmless buffoon, strategically staging an awkward display of self-mockery to unearth issues of identity and to challenge the narrow views that frame such issues in cultural theory.
Humor is deployed to lure my audience into the work by creating a false sense of comfort; by making the object of mockery [me] personal and familiar, thus making the viewer accountable for their own absurdities, prejudices, and personal faults. My work draws from the pathetic, deeply personal, and unspoken intentions, judgments and one-liners derived from everyday experiences and transforms into sharp and 'not-so-easy-to-swallow' representations of the world.
My videos are an attempt to articulate my position; to question cultural meanings around constructed notions of 'Whiteness' and the 'Other', emphasizing the inherent but not so obvious hostility that exists between these identities. I am caught between two conflicting cultures; insisting that something is, what so clearly it is not. Through humor in one or more of its forms [slapstick, deadpan, camp and most definitely kitsch] my videos draw the viewer into a space of comic effect that I hope contradicts a far deeper and more affecting mental and emotional intent. By means of this discomfort I hope to bring about an awareness of misrepresentations and preconceived notions, all the while evoking amusement and embarrassment.
1Joke told by former Conservative MP Ann Winterton at a rugby club dinner in 2002