j.p.mot’s object of research centers on reclaiming the orientalist gaze depicted by colonial ethnographers. Within his creative process, he is interested in serendipity and in-situ chance encounters leading to the creation of mixed-media installations. These diverse assemblages center around the study of canned humor and subversive semantics underlined by words, characters, corporate branding, and iconographies found on discarded objects of consumption, through site-specific scavenging. He uses new technology in an oneiric manner to mistranslate information. He is interested in ideas of mass production and mass media portrayals through the study of colonial imaginary and body politics.
The installation “Please keep a safe […]: Chin Chin – Grass Jelly Drinks” (2020) was produced at the end of the first wave of the COVID pandemic, amid the U.S. election. It juxtaposes the social distancing notice from the MTA of New York to a Taiwanese drink packaging found in Chinatown. The brand of the drink, “Chin Chin,” translates as “kiss kiss” and expresses this idea of Asian scapegoating through the idea of the “Chinese kiss.” The sitting president at the time referred to the pandemic as the “Chinese virus” slur in the media, while asking the viewers if their beliefs are “Grass-rooted” or “Grass-jellied” in a tongue-in-cheek manner, through the presence of a ghostly being. The work utilizes these concepts through a multimedia installation involving kinetic sculpture, prints, found objects, and an augmented reality application.
J.P.MOT (of his full name: Jean-Pierre Abdelrahman Minh Mot Chen Hadji Yakop a.k.a. by his legal name: Jean-Pierre Mot), is a first-generation born Khmer-Canadian, conceptual experimental artist and essayist, child of Chams – a Muslim minority in Cambodia – refugee emigrants who settled in Canada after a few years in France following the end of the Khmer Rouge genocide; Mot was born and raised in Montreal and is currently living and working in New York.
He completed a BFA in Visual and New Media Art (2009) and an MA in International Development (2012), both at the University of Quebec in Montreal; He also received an MFA in Visual Art (2015) from Columbia University in New York. He has been supported, in the past, by the Montreal Art Council, the Quebec art and Letter Council, the Canada Art Council, the NARS Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Foundation for Contemporary Art in New York, the Asian Art Archive in America, and the Trust for Governors Island.
For more information on j.p. and their work, visit jpmot.com.
