ARTIST STATEMENT
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My roots spread across the earth. My fingerprints caress every community’s embrace. Their residue like tiny poems begging to leave each place better than it was found. I grew up in a multicultural family and moved around many times. I would spend long summers with my family in China. I barely grasped the language and struggled to keep up in conversation. Even when I was in places where I did know the language fluently, sometimes I was too shy to speak. I learned instead to sink into the space between words. A vast world of images, movements, and feelings that don’t quite land in speech. I created my own vocabulary and art was my dictionary. Image became a medium to express my story and connect with others across many barriers. Through trauma and grief and joy, art stuck with me. It was a way to process experiences too devastating to name as much as it was a way for me to share my love with others.
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Art shapeshifted many times. As a child, it was drawing the same sunset every day. It was wrapping my dolls like mummies with yarn. It was tracing lines on the landscape with ice skates. It was daydreaming about a more just world. In college, it was chaotic paintings. It was delicate paper sculptures. It was collections of similar objects. It was video interviews seeking to understand. It was sharing food with others. And it grew. Art became a socially engaged practice. It was interactive objects and environments. It blurred the line between performance and conversation. It was dancing in public. It was weaving together stories. It was finding integration in my own. Today, art is a way for me to time travel between many places and states. My practice is building and archiving a universe uncovering many characters in their diverse narratives and the landscapes that hold them all.
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