Separation Census’ is an evolving collage series that explores the intersection of personal intimacies and the political economy of urban development.
The work draws from Inye’s personal experience of displacement. He still lives in a family home in the Central District, but virtually all of his extended family, over 150 relatives, have moved out of the neighborhood. In this work he is attempting to mine the emotional consequences of this departure for those who left and those who managed to stay. The work not only graphically geolocates family members, it maps the quantity and the quality of intimate encounters over time in speculative and anecdotal graphs using census-style data.
The work deconstructs and reimagines the impersonal logic and language of big data. By decentering the priorities of the marketplace Separation Census deploys these tools to understand the more intimate impacts of displacement and force migration.
Separation Census is iterative. Inye has displayed evolving versions of this series between 2020 and 2022 in three group exhibitions and one solo installation.
