View, The Past is a Foreign Country, 2015, Beeler Gallery, Columbus College of Art and Design

The Past is a Foreign Country is a narrative of the paradoxical relationship of an Asian-American. The seemingly disparate works in the installation provide a fragmented search for the complex relationship of the personal and the historical, with a commonality in material and process that explore fragility and decay. Paz is deploying diasporic intimacy, particularly the notion of 'home' and the 'return' as sites for dispute and ambivalence. This project is a renovation of her understanding of home--an architectural model of her family house in Manila, a balikbayan box engraved with images of its interior, a print of a destroyed painting, pixelated and blown up in scale, and a video mapping her two homes.

It's a Journey Back that I'm Always Taking (Balikbayan Box), 2015

Laser carved cardboard box

60.96 x 45.72 x 60.96 cm (24 x 18 x 24 inches)

In a circuitous event, this sculpture has traveled from the USA to Philippines and then back as a Balikbayan box. As a sculpture, ‘Balikbayan Box’ was featured at the 2019 Vienna Contemporary, with unttld contemporary, as well as the exhibition ‘Far Away but Strangely Familiar’, curated by Tony Godfrey at the Danubiana Museum.