Michael Arcega: Homing Pidgin

Contemporary artist Michael Arcega reinterprets the Oceanic collections at the de Young with Homing Pidgin, a Collection Connections exhibition. Arcega is known for sculpture and installations that revolve around language, a subject he dealt with early in his life when his family emigrated from the Philippines to California. At the de Young, he shows common Oceanic objects that have become altered after frequent interactions with Western culture. He compares this phenomenon to the pidgin languages (dialects that blend Western and Oceanic words) spoken throughout Oceania. He calls the works “pidgin objects.” “In the same way pidgin languages get ideas across, these cultural residues of pidgin objects act as bridges toward understanding the artifacts within the glass cases,” Arcega says.