Constant oscillation : Maria Cruz's 'OO (yes)'

The title of the recent survey show of Maria Cruz’s work from the last decade or so – ‘oo yes’ – sounds like a squeal of delighted joy in English, but ‘oo’ means yes (in all its possible inflections) in the Philippines’ Tagalog. The title, like most of the works selected for the exhibition, points to the process of cultural translation that are ubiquitous in everyday experiences of the modern world, and that form one of the nuclei of Cruz’s work. Brought about by the forces of globalisation, migration, mediatisation and tourism, these constant translations of the quotidian cross media and cultural forms, vernacular and high culture, commerce and art. Cruz is adept at creating rapid oscillations between two sides of the same coin, or two sides of the same story, an undecidable difference and/or sameness that makes for complexity, ambivalence and the kind of irony created by the invitation to the Sydney version of the show.