MODIFIED FRUIT: Weaving a transcultural practice through leaving, returning and about being from elsewhere

My doctoral project, MODIFIED FRUIT: Weaving a transcultural practice through leaving, returning, and about being from elsewhere has focused on the dialectic of the natural/synthetic (authentic/artificial), which I expand on through a transcultural lens by combining piña (Pineapple) cloth, embroidery, polyester, and digitally printed textiles. My studio installation practice lies between art, drawing, digital media, textiles and architecture. During my candidacy, I have focused my research on piña cloth, through fieldwork in the Philippines. In tracing the route of the pineapple, I explore how works that are produced in a space of mobility are the result of transcultural processes which involve acts of appropriation, and in which new forms arise through both mistranslation and auto-ethnography.