Growing up as the oldest daughter in a first-generation Asian American household came with a multitude of high expectations - both culturally, socially, and economically - none of which I met, as a genderqueer artist searching for forms of personal fulfillment in ways other than monetary. As a child, I often found solace in art, both from my own hands and the hands of others, as it functioned as my escape from the war-traumatized, conservative, and traditional family I grew up in. Through the observation of patterns within the art I consumed, I learned that to be an artist is to learn how to express one's humanity, and as my art developed through elementary and intermediate phases, I understood that I had to choose between my culture's expectations for me and my own desire to express myself in a limitless artistic space. While I had no regrets with the path I decided to take, I have since felt the urge to reconnect with the parts of my culture that served me well - the sense of community, the history, the people - since these are a crucial part of my identity, I needed a way to bridge the gap I had formed with it.
As a result, my long-term artistic investigation has developed into a deep exploration of the aspects that make up the human experience - the expansiveness of our spectrum of emotion, the influence of generational trauma in our perception of the present, and the interactions between an individual and the culture they belong in. To what extent do emotions transcend social boundaries? What constitutes our sense of self, and how does it correspond with those around us? How does our upbringing and the culture we immerse ourselves in affect our expectations, behaviors, and interpersonal relationships? Each work is an introspection - an examination of my own psyche, but also a broader statement - a study of how the patterns we see within ourselves serve as microcosms of the holistic human experience. My work searches for ways to connect time and space, across contradicting eras and cultures, to understand what it truly means to be alive in this world. I seek to find beauty in the empathetic power of emotion, unearthing the root of our existence piece by piece and ultimately searching for the core of what defines our humanity.
My artistic process begins with an inquiry - a question or concept I wish to explore further through art-making - and is motivated by artistic influence - cultivated from both traditional and contemporary references. It continues through research, as I study successful elements from different sources of visual language and determine how to integrate them into my personal work. Oftentimes I go back to my own heritage - examining traditional Chinese imagery and untangling its nuance to fit in a modern context. Given that my work deals greatly with generational trauma and the cross-cultural examination of it, I find it important to return to the purest form of self-expression a culture has to offer - its art. The research phase therefore serves a second purpose, not only becoming a tool to thematically depict traditional iconography accurately in my own work, but also becoming a mode of personal development as I connect to my own culture through the elements of its artwork. This is the engine of my intrinsic ambition - my urge to create combined with my desire to understand what makes up my culture’s collective experience allows for me to be self-motivated in my workflow. Execution and critique are the next steps in my creative process. I produce experimental paintings, editions, and works on paper that straddle the components of traditional realism and contemporary abstraction, creating a “disrupted realism” that I have learned to utilize.
During challenging points in my production phase, I turn to the creative critique, consulting mentors and fellow artists for solutions. To be in a community practice with different artists and their unique life experiences, creative processes, and methods of thinking is the highest privilege of functioning in an academic setting, and I utilize the critique to gain additional perspective on pieces that have turned stagnant. As a creative thinker, I strive towards constant growth, craving situations that allow me to think abstractly, produce differently, and learn consistently. I open myself up to new and profound interactions in the ever-expanding world of art with an air of humility, understanding that my inquiries become lifelong questions. Each work is an attempt to find solace in the gray space between incoherency and understanding, where art flourishes in the telephone game between the intent of the artist and the interpretation of the audience. My body of work as a whole serves as a dialogue between myself and my environment - my culture, my community, and my audience - a conversation sustained through the need to understand one another.