Nay Ho Mah Po Po

(2022) Video, film photograph, photoshopped digital overlays, audio recording manipulations.

“Nay Ho Mah Po Po” is a short video piece about language barriers, connection, and translation. The work confronts the relationships between English and “foreign” languages in American media and entertainment. The YouTube video “Wes Anderson and the Follies of Modern Orientalism” by Broey Deschanel discusses the way the prominent filmmaker treats “foreigners” in his movies. Anderson’s orientalist approach uses Asian people as props and background aesthetics. These characters are rarely are given important roles or speaking parts. Rather, they are used to portray stereotypical tropes about “Oriental people.” In Isle of Dogs, Japanese characters’ lines are not translated into English subtitles. This makes it difficult for the Western viewer to feel any sort of connection with the non-white characters.

There is a fascinating dichotomy between the racialized Eastern subjects and the impressionable Western audience. In Edward Said’s words, Orientalism has to do with the “disregarding, essentializing, [and] denuding [of the] humanity of another culture, people, or geographical region.” This work dives into the mystification of the ‘other,’ specifically through the use of subtitles and translation of foreign languages in films.

“Nay Ho Mah Po Po” centers the artist’s relationship with these themes, using their Po Po and themself as the subjects. Informed by personal experiences with Orientalism, this video employs a mixture of film photography, Photoshopped textual graphics, and auditory interventions sourced from phone call recordings to destabilize the audience.

Special thanks to Lauren Anastasia for help with audio editing.