Graduation project
Filipino Thing
Miguel Garchitorena
How an Edam cheese ends up in the designer’s fridge is traced back to the Netherlands’ failed attempt at colonising the Philippines.
A heavy, hard ball wrapped in wax, shaped as a cannon ball. What is it and how did it get into Miguel Garchitorena’s refrigerator? His mother remembered it by the Spanish name queso de bola (cheese ball), savoured on Christmas Day in the Philippines. Its red plastic wrapping gives it the appearance of a gift. In fact, it is Edam cheese, a vestige of the Dutch colonization attempt in the Philippines during 1646. Filipino Thing presents a fragmented personal perspective on this complex geopolitical history, informed by oral stories and family traditions. Edam cheese and its wax wrapping was used to cast metal sculptures, drawing out the violent dimensions of the dominant Western construction of knowledge and its everyday objects.