KASUMI IWAMA

   One of the first things that I noticed when I came to Ecuador was how people used mugs with broken handles. I was astonished because in Japan or the US, where I had grown up, broken mugs would be deemed "unusable" and thrown away or maybe stashed away in the cupboard as keepsake, at best. This small act of continuing to use broken mugs as a part of every day life seemed revolutionary and anti-consumerist to someone who had come from such a hyper consume and dispose culture, where the slightest deformation could be enough reason to buy a new one. 

I used these pieces of broken mugs, especially the handles, with other material I found in the streets of Quito to create small, intimate assemblages that were put together in an installation as a memory of my time in Quito. 

   The consumption of popcorn as a regular part of the everyday life was also something that I had never encountered elsewhere and to me was very unique to the local lifestyle. At the same time, the quantity of coca-cola consumption was surprising, and I put together these two items, to show how societies are comprised of local cultures (popcorn) and global capitalism (Coca-Cola).