For 22 years, I have been so close to my family – attached even. For those same 22 years, I have felt worlds apart from them, sometimes with physical miles, but most times the distance I feel exists within the same spaces. I have always hated the gravity of the separation that constantly hovers like an invisible dark cloud pushing me away. But it is that disconnect that pulls me in and compels me to cherish these people. After this documentary project on my family, I have discovered that there is a separation inside all of us. There is a removal in our quiet moments of rote and routine. It is the distance that holds me together to my family and carries me through everyday life. The spaces that stretch between, that lie within us, that I feel and share with the people I love, those cold spaces shape me and move all at once.

Kathleen Tutaan, 2012

Imagine seeing without truly seeing, being blinded without ever realizing. There is a propensity to define characteristics of the U.S. racial/ethnic landscape in order to gain a better sense of clarity and understanding when it comes to identity. And yet, perhaps this tendency to identify one another obscures our perception of truly seeing someone for who that person really is. Through self-portraits and portraiture of young Asian Americans, I investigate the oppression and marginalization that this generation encounters from their cultural hybridity in terms of colonial mentality and ethnic stereotype. I photograph these portraits of Asian Americans in a way that “others” or “Orientalizes” them, or blurs their physical identity. I explore my own biculturalism through photographs of myself. And yet these portraits of Asian Americans become the true self-portrait. My project seeks to negotiate balance, to bridge cultural differences, and expose and challenge issues of stereotypical thinking in order to understand what it means to be both Asian and American.

 
Kathleen Tutaan, 2012-2013

In a world that is obsessed with body image, facial appearances, and materialism, U.S. culture tells females what we should want and what is considered beautiful. But the ideal expectation of women in our society is demanding, unrealistic, and an ever-present facet in everyday living. In a reality that I have constructed, I challenge ideas behind the reality of the standardization of beauty that our world has created for us. I reflect upon this construction of femininity in a cyclic way that influences my insecurities and distorts my view of the meaning of womanhood.

Kathleen Tutaan, 2012

The Barbie Doll can be considered our generation's perception of the "glorified" woman, a standard of American beauty. In this project, Man-ners, Barbies are obliterated or hidden beneath the blanket generalizations comprised of society's accustomed symbols of femininity. Similar to grand master paintings of still-life and the idealized female form, I use the cliche theme of the female body as "object" as well as cliched symbols of feminism (kitchenware, lace, jewelry) to create decadent, elegant, and fragile still-life compositions that tell a darker story of the tragedy of feminine domesticity.

Kathleen Tutaan, 2012

I have always battled with my identity as being Asian American. When my father was in the military, I traveled across the U.S. and lived in states that had very Caucasian-dominant communities. Since I possessed this duality of culture, others felt the need to define me in some way by understanding me through colors: an ‘inside’ color, and an ‘outside’ color. My American-ness would be the white part of me. And my Asian-ness would be the yellow part. Often I was called a banana, an egg, a donut, and one time even a Twinkie. The banana and the Twinkie represented a yellow Asian-ness or a difference in skin color on the ‘outside,’ with an evident white American-ness in my behavior and personality on the ‘inside’ : vice versa with the egg and donut.

As time went on, I found myself desiring the white American-ness of myself because society had imprinted on me that we should all desire what is ‘white’ and what is ‘normal.’ Television, magazines, commercials, billboards, they all forced this idea in my mind that ‘white’ was what I should want. Because of this I felt like I had lost this other side of myself. This project is about my struggle in finding balance in my Asian American identity.

Kathleen Tutaan, 2011

I was once told that, “’Reality’ is the only word in the English language that should always be used in quotes.” The reality I chose to construct is my own mental reality of insecurity and body image. Using various everyday locations in and around my house, as well as the ideal, iconic figure of the Barbie Doll, I express my feelings of desire and haunting to be perfect. Growing up I have always played with these dolls and admired their unrealistic silhouette until it turned into an obsession, until the dolls seemed to overtake me and become me, until I became them. I wonder if these feelings of insecurity will transform themselves physically within me as a result of societal expectations. I explore this type of imagined world through a constructed reality.

Kathleen Tutaan, 2012

Because my father was in the military, most of my life I have lived from one suburban neighborhood to the next, from the east coast of the United States to the Midwest. The suburban neighborhood in Tucson differs from the typical notion of what a suburban neighborhood would look like (white picket fence, saturated green grass); however it does adopt the same ideas of uniformity. What interests me is my significance or insignificance within the 'sameness.' Based on my parents' upbringing, they were always taught that suburban living was the true symbol of success. Yet I have never quite found my place in this "Little Box" lifestyle.

With this project, I began to physically feel the manicured landscape around me. It was this idea of touching an untouchable place in order to make it real to me. I have found that as neatly packaged each lot may appear to be, there are small details of imperfection; a crack in a rock, oil stains on a pavement, the contrast of new and faded brick. My detachment and resentment toward cookie-cutter neighborhoods were challenged and changed through this project. The fragmentation of my body represents my inability to feel whole in a place of “sameness.” Using my body and the architectural landscape of the Tucson Suburbs, I attempt to rediscover a part of my identity that I have never been able to quite identify with.

Kathleen Tutaan, 2010

Conversion Box is a metaphor for American assimilation, where America becomes a container that causes individuals to transform and conform. Wrapped in Mylar, the cube becomes a reflective object. It calls upon a self-reflection while also literally mirroring the outside world or society in a distorted way. We enter the box with our identities in the form of images from our family archive. The suitcase is symbolic of the baggage we bring along with us when traveling from one place to another whether it is over borders or overseas, from one home to another, or from someplace to someplace else.

This box is the liminal space of transformation that can represent a variety of assimilating devices or institutions, for example, religion, education, or the military…etc. Two people nail the lid of the box, forcing us into a confined space. Ironically, we struggle to come out of this box that we, ourselves, created and went into on our own free will in the first place.

Once we fit into the box, we are forced to fit in and strip ourselves of our own identity, so we shred the images we came in with that contain our culture and our past histories. Essentially it shreds who we are. The conversion box not only destroys the pictures, it also renders them into the same quarter inch fragments. At times, the shreds are reversed back into the box signifying a struggle or a rejection to assimilation. In the end, we break out of the box only to be a modified version of ourselves, “white-washed,” and absent of our identity. We come out with the suitcase filled with the slivers of our identity we strived to save, but after losing so much it is tossed because it becomes meaningless. Our identity is gone as we walk into society, and the assimilation is complete.

video for view at bottom page

Kathleen Tutaan & Ernie Somoza, 2011
Video Art Installation and Performance

Kathleen Tutaan, 2009

Onion, a project in which I layer-mask my identity through the construction and deconstruction of the American and Philippine landscape in terms of the fantasy or falsity of the American Dream.

Kathleen Tutaan, 2011

​Kathleen Tutaan, 2010