Synopsis:

The Columns Gallery Singapore is pleased to present Becoming White by Eisa Jocson at the second S.E.A. Focus in Singapore.

In Becoming White, Jocson looks at the performance of happiness as labour by constructing the figure of the Disney Princess Snow White. The work involves elements of performance, archival materials, video and sound installation. Her choreographed works conflict issues plaguing the migrant affective labor of Filipino workers in Hong Kong, which is inscribed in within the inequalities of global race and labour relations. Within her recreations of classic Disney scenes, they are excluded from the main roles that are reserved for specific racial profiles and are instead assigned nameless and thankless supporting characters, such as a zebra in Lion King, a coral in Little Mermaid or a monkey in Tarzan.

Becoming White was produced for Bangkok Art Biennale and Cultural Center of the Philippines 13 Artist Awards in 2018. Becoming White has also been part of the following group exhibitions: RAM Highlight: Princess Studies (2018), Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, Motions of this Kind (2019), The Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, UK; Courses of Action (2019), Parasite, Hong Kong.

Eisa Jocson is a contemporary choreographer and dancer from the Philippines with a background in ballet and trained in the visual arts. She has been commissioned by and toured extensively in major contemporary art festivals with her solo triptych: Death of the Pole Dancer (2011), Macho Dancer (2013) and Host (2015). She exposes body politics in the service and entertainment industry as seen through the unique socioeconomic lens of the Philippines. Eisa Jocson studies how the body moves and what conditions make it move - be it social mobility or movement out of Philippines through migrant work. In all her chosen subjects and mediums - from pole, macho dancing, hostessing to depictions of Disney princesses - capital is the driving force of movement pushing the indentured body into spatial geographies. Eisa Jocson is winner of the recent Hugo Boss Asia Art Award 2019; commissioned by Sharjah Biennale 2019; recipient of the 2018 Cultural Centre of the Philippines 13 Artists Award; elected as one of the outstanding contemporary productions for the 2018 edition of Tanzplattform, Germany and clinched the Zurcher Kantonalbank Acknowledgement Prize at Zurich Theater Spektakel in 2013.