“bahay kubo”
Rayleen Forester
28 Oct → 21 Nov 2023
West Space Window

Performance lecture, 28 Oct, 5 – 5:30 am

A figure wearing black reads text from a wooden platform whilst facing a window display. Behind the tall window pane is a tall house embodying and silhouetted by text, perhaps in relation to what the individual is reading. A couple figures in the backdrop listen intently.
Rayleen Forester, 'buhay kubo', 2023, text-based installation, lecture performance, West Space Window, Collingwood Yards. Photography by Janelle Low.

Rayleen Forester presents bahay kubo in the West Space Window.

bahay kubo is a performance lecture and text-based installation examining filipinx diaspora language, cultural heritage and migrant labour. Based on a children's folk song about bamboo stilt houses indigenous to the Philippines bahay kubo touches on cultural embodiment, hereditary responsibility and our nuanced relationship with colonised lands.

As part of a series of personally led, public interventions bahay kubo is the second iteration of gatherings for filipinx diaspora community and allies to connect and participate through performance and writing.

bahay kubo: Written and performed by Rayleen Forester
Utang na Loob: Written and performed by Beatrice Rubio-Gabriel
Installation design: Nina Gibbes
Lectern design: Peter Fong

This project is supported by Arts South Australia. The West Space Window is supported by City of Yarra and viewable during all Collingwood Yards open hours.

A tall house embodying and silhouetted by an array of text and words, performing as lines defining the house form. The image is exhibited behind a tall, narrow window display.
A figure wearing a black tshirt pear down reading text and holding a microphone in front of a wooden platform. In the background there is a large, out-of-focused green tree. The bottom half of their backdrop is a fence of brick. They are depicted from the knees upward.
A figure with their back to the camera, pears down a narrow walk breeze-way, wearing a transparent cream dress. A large crowd lines the edges of the breeze-way listening intently.
A girl holding a microphone behind a wooden platform holding text, pears upward as they talk. Behind there is a large green tree, out of focus. They are depicted from the knees up.
The side of a figure in a long cream-coloured shirt, their finger is tracing text that is sprawled across two sheets on a wooden platform. The anonymous figure is holding a microphone.
A person behind the podium speaking with the microphone to the crowd in the hallway.

Rayleen Forester is an arts worker based on Kaurna Country. Rayleen’s curatorial interests focus on cross-cultural engagement and outcomes through experimental curation and programming, performance and writing. Rayleen has worked for major international biennales and art galleries in both Europe and Asia including MANIFESTA9 (Belgium) and MEM (Japan). She co-curated the long-established Artists’ Week symposium with Lars Bang Larsen (Denmark) and Richard Grayson (UK) for the 2014 Adelaide Festival. She has written for exhibition catalogues and publications including UNmagazine, Artlink and Broadsheet journal. She is a founding member of South Australian initiatives FELTspace, fine print and is currently Associate Curator at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental.