Part One of an interview series “Interior Conversations”. This conversation is with Lesley-Anne Cao, an artist based in Quezon City, Philippines. Among the subjects of this conversation is on working with detritus and the struggles of being an artist.

The square, in order to be destroyed, requires more than a slip or an accident. One will have to smash it with a weapon or take it apart with a tool; there is the element of choice and control— so violent and so human. Yet here, we may also find the edge of comfort and familiarity, the limits of constraint.

Home is the warm hand that had hovered above you in the earliest moments of your life and which has left its edifying imprint upon you. I speak of the warm hand as if it were a constant. There are instances when it is not.