Khairi Christopher poses in front of his video installation "Flush." Photo/Cassandra Casas.

Field Day, a collaborative art group of young artists, held a weekend art show in Los Angeles in late September. The artists come from the Inland Empire. One of these artist in particular is filmmaker Khairi Christopher.

Khairi, a former actor, has appeared in commercials and shows on networks such as ABC. The pursuit of his acting career required him to be home-schooled for most of his childhood. Watching all of his friends from afar made him yearn for social interaction.

“It was cool because I was able to be whoever I wanted without anyone judging me,” Khairi said about his homeschool experience. “But It was kind of messed up because I still had all my friends on social media and they would be having a good time so I wanted to stop and see what it was all about.”

Still image from the video "Flush." Courtesy of Khairi Christopher.

Khairi attended Rancho Cucamonga High School in the fall of his senior year where continued to act until he decided to quit. He said acting as a child made him very insecure and unsure of himself.

“Acting is really difficult. Like when I started, I was just a kid and I was super outgoing and like loved it. I actually had a good run. I could have went somewhere but, it gets hard when you have a lot of eyes on you. I became very insecure.”

Putting a hold on acting, Khairi began working at Starbucks and attending Arizona State University online as a film and media major. Although he stopped acting, his heart is still very much in love with film and all aspects of it. Simply shifting his role he began working behind the lens rather than in front. Even though he decided to quit acting he was still haunted by the insecurities that came from it, and he feels they at first held back his cinematography. Khairi said he would shoot a lot, but was never confident in what he was making, he deemed them as “not worthy.” This anxiety was relieved when he and his friends created Field Day. Their kinship not only helped him gain more confidence, but forced him to create.

For the Field Day Art Show, Khairi prepared an installation based on the insecurities he had as a young artist. He released a film installation titled “Flush” presented on cathode ray tube television sets he found at the Goodwill.

“It’s a video installation. I worked on it everyday. It’s kinda strange. It’s about how I wasn’t releasing a lot of my art because I thought it wasn’t good enough. So, I’ve always had all these files on my computer and although they aren’t the best shot pieces, at one point in time I was really happy with them. So this instillation is my way of flushing out.”

He will only release this installation at the show, but is currently in the works of another short film which he plans to screen in November. In regards to future plans, Khai’s dream is to work with the film studio A24, and to continue studying film at Chapman University after graduating from Arizona State.

To keep up with Khai’s future films and art shows, follow him @off.screen on Instagram!

The Collective: Khairi Christopher