Territorial Affection, 2025

performative dinner lecture, approximately 2 hours. Khanom jeen served on a u-shape table, dishes and ingredients brought by guests, books, scanned copies of excerpts, pens, scissors, markers​

Photo credit: Billy Ehret

I was the artist in residence at Mission Street Arts, in Jemez Springs, New Mexico in May 2025. During my residency, I conducted 10 interviews with local residents on where they are from and how they have arrived in Jemez Springs, More fundamentally, I wanted to know what creates a sense of belonging when you do not have blood ancestry in connection to the land and what sustains an ideal form of social relationship. 

As the final event for my residency, I invited the residents of the village to gather for a meal of khanom jeen, a Southeast Asian noodle dish with curry. The khanom jeen is a popular dish from Ayutthya where my great grand uncle, Pridi Banomyong was born. Each guest was prompted to bring a dish or ingredient that has cultural meaning for them. Throughout the meal, I read excerpts from books borrowed from the public library on New Mexico's complex relationship to land, multiple settlements, cross-cultural exchanges and spiritual quest. Many of the current residents moved from all across the US, drawn to Jemez Springs by the grandiosity of the surrounding nature, the ancientness of the lands and above all, a unique balance between community and solitude. The guests expanded on these themes with their own experiences and histories of searching and migrations.

The recordings of the interviews will be made available on the Jemez Springs Public Library's website as an oral archive of the current composition of the local community.

Drawings on Tablecloth from Territorial Affection, 2025