The Columns Gallery Singapore is pleased to present Becoming White by EisaJocson at S.E.A. Focus in Singapore. In Becoming White, Jocson looks at the performance of happiness as labor by constructing the figure of the Disney Princess Snow White. The work involves performance, archival materials, video and sound installation. This choreography finds resonance in the migrant affective labor of Fillipino workers in Hong Kong, which inscribed in within relations of race and global spectacle. Excluded from the main roles that are reserved from specific racial profiles, they are assigned anonymous supporting roles such as a zebra in Lion King, a coral in Little Mermaid, a monkey in Tarzan. Becoming White was produced for Bangkok Art Biennale and Cultural Center of the Philippines 13 Artist Awards in 2018. Becoming White has also been part of the following group exhibitions: RAM Highlight: Princess Studies(2018), Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, Motions of this Kind (2019), The Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, UK; Courses of Action (2019), Parasite, Hong Kong.

Eisa Jocson is a contemporary Choreographer and dancer from the Philippines, trained as a visual artist, with a background in ballet. She has been commissioned by and toured extensively in major contemporary festival with her solo triptych: Death of the Pole Dancer(2011), Macho Dancer(2013) and Host(2015). She exposes body politics in the service and entertainment industry as seen through the unique socioeconomic lens of the Philippines. Eisa Jocson studies how the body moves and what conditions make it move - be it social mobility or movement out of philippines through migrant work. In all her creations - from pole to macho dancing and hostess to Disney princess studies - capital is the driving force of movement pushing the indentured body into special geographies. EisaJocson is winner of the recent Hugo Boss Asia Art Award 2019; commissioned by Sharjah Biennale 2019; recipient of the 2018 Cultural Centre of the Philippines 13 Artist Award; elected as one of the outstanding contemporary productions for the 2018 edition of Tranzplattform, Germany and Clinched the Zurcher Kantonalbank Acknowledgement Prize at the Zurich TheaterSpektakel in 2013.