Michael Arcega: Baby (Medium for Intercultural Navigation)

Curator. San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries: Grove St. Window Installation Site. September - November 2014

In 2011, Arcega built a hand-made, collapsible Pacific outrigger canoe, naming it Baby, for his solo exhibition at San Francisco’s Luggage Store Gallery. Inspired by the correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Lewis & Clark, he set out to paint an updated picture of North American people by sailing Baby on rivers and waterways across the U.S. The project began on May 21, 2011, with a journey from Richmond, VA, the seat of the Confederacy, to Jamestown, VA, the site of the first successful British colony. Subsequent voyages took Baby through Chincoteague Bay, the Pocomoke River, the Mississippi River, Bayou St. John, the Rio Grande/Pecos River, and San Francisco Bay, each leg creating new encounters and insights.

This project examines the people of the Nacirema—“American” spelled backwards and a reference to Horace Mitchell Miner’s 1956 essay, which satirizes anthropological attempts to define “others” in U.S. culture. Arcega explores contact languages, Pidgins, and Creoles as mediums for intercultural communication, with Baby functioning as both a vehicle for geographic navigation and a metaphor for cultural exchange. In the Grove Street installation, Baby is suspended in the space, becoming a thought-object rather than a vessel. Passersby view it through windows, catching their own reflection alongside that of City Hall, creating a dynamic interplay that extends Baby’s role as a medium and metaphor for communication.

Babywill also be featured in the group exhibition, Everyone’s Ocean at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History from December 19, 2014 – April 19, 2015.