about

My work considers the impact of family separation in the face of China’s One Child Policy through the creation of personal mythologies and manifestations of past, present, and future ghosts. My practice begins with a violent wiping of the slate—biologically, phonetically, and geographically—followed by an intentional process of relearning language and culture. It is tied around questions of identity, cultural displacement, and belonging—led by my own experiences as a first-generation Asian American, adoptee, and mother. Through my work, I explore the intersections between personal history and larger societal forces like migration, family, and systems of control. Caught perpetually in an in-between state, my experience of navigating the soft gray edges of identity continues to both define my painting practice and push it further into murkier waters. 
Centered in my work is the idea of translation as transformation. Like traditional myths that evolve with each iteration and geographic crossing, my visual narratives morph and fracture as they move across different paintings, mediums, and contexts. My process mirrors the fragile transmission of cultural memory, where meanings distort, unravel, or multiply depending on who is telling the story and where it is being told. These imagined mythologies, neither entirely Chinese nor fully American, inhabit what theorist Homi K. Bhabha describes as the "third space"—a space where new hybridized identities arise and resist dominant narratives. They exist in a liminal world that grasps what-ifs, dreams, and longings—creating stories of belonging that arrive and depart without answers.
In many ways, I am also a ghost, trying to prove my existence through visible labor and repeated mark-making that insists "I was here". These tactile elements evoke rituals of counting, collecting, and remembrance.