JAZMINA CININAS

This work draws on the correlations between waste plastics, such as that sourced from biscuit packaging and meat trays, and snakeskin. The 'weaving' pattern is loosely based on the markings that can be found on Australia’s Death Adder, one of the most poisonous snakes in the world. The work sets up a counterpart to the Baltic Adder, alluding to the blurring of cultural identities and reinvention of self that occurs with migrant diasporas; one needs to shed one's former identity for a new culture, but echoes of the former identity always remain. 

This work forms a companion piece to one of the earliest frottages that I created during the lockdown of 2020. It likewise makes use of the correspondence between my vintage kitchen implements and feathers. The cuckoo exists in both Europe and Australia – albeit different species of the bird. In both parts of the world, the hatchling ‘masquerades’ as another species, being raised by parents that are not its own, a foreigner in the nest where it was born. As such, the cuckoo serves as a metaphor for the conflicted place and identity of immigrant populations.