Mogu(蘑菇)-Matic: color sutra
Mogu means mushroom in Chinese, and magic is taken from Latin meaning a system. The work evolved as a visual meditation and physical practice similar to chanting or prayer. The purpose of representing these organisms’ forms in a grid is to provoke exploration of the intersection between organic and human practices. We begin to blur the lines between nature and technology, as we have seen with the latest vaccines. Technology begins to look more and more organic in structure.
Fragmented Landscape
This series of abstract works on paper were created through a printmaking process that explores impressions of space, snapshots of time moving in the urban landscape. I am impacted by human-made shapes intermingled with nature. These colorful prints blur the lines between the real and imagined, each suggesting structures and organic forms floating within an abstract landscape.
Unmeasured No.2
Unmeasured No.2 and Unmeasured No.1 are a pair of movement explorations that address our disconnected rhythm of busy modern life. Framing an unaltered natural landscape devoid of people as a stage, I used my body to personify elements and qualities within the immediate environment. The work was an impression of experience in that moment of unified dialog with nature, in the first and only interaction with each space.
Unmeasured No.1
Unmeasured No.1 and Unmeasured No.2 are a pair of movement explorations that address our disconnected rhythm of busy modern life. Framing an unaltered natural landscape devoid of people as a stage, I used my body to personify elements and qualities within the immediate environment. The work was an impression of experience in that moment of unified dialog with nature, in the first and only interaction with each space.
Am I my Own City?
This sound installation explored the individual nature of human culture, by mapping cities where I have traveled and lived, to experience the reality of internal perception as a greater force than the cities themselves. While cities exist physically they also exist mentally and personally. In these ever-changing spaces, I wonder where to find our community… where do we find “Our City”? It is a response and counterpart to Where Do I Find My City.
Within The Forest
Within the Forest created a space for contemplation and healing, based on a story from my childhood. This project originated from a simple desire to bring good wishes and hopes during a time of political and cultural transition. The “forest” emerges from one continuous single scroll of white paper I cut by hand. It represents renewal, hope, calm, and possibility.
I Am One Of Them
I am One of Them was based on personal experience. As we grow we shed our skin and we remember, holding on to what we have necessarily outgrown. Living far away from my home as an immigrant for many years I have marked my change through places and times that have left impressions.
On a Spring Day
On a Spring Day was an innovative sound-composed experiment, framed on a given topic to interact with individuals and weave a narrative within a short duration to be presented during the show. It was created at the beginning of the exhibition, interviewing 30 unknown gallery visitors in China remotely from the US as participants through a Chinese social platform. The work sought to utilize technology to engage strangers in a simple and interactive dialog on the change in seasons to make us take a moment to reconnect with people, memories, and nature.
Where Ink Meets Sky
Where Ink Meets Sky was created during a two-month eco-retreat residency as part of an awarded Schoolhouse fellowship, near the Great Wall. The work re-envisioned the process of walking through the mountain among the chestnut groves, where I traveled daily going back and forth among villages, in the folds of the mountain. Focusing on the balance of human culture with the natural world, I was inspired by the land itself to create a space just as grand, allowing the viewer to walk in and explore.
Traces
These temporary site installations were made from collected leaves in the Mutianyu Great Wall area. The Great Wall is one of a few human structures you can see from space, and a thousand human lives were sacrificed to make this creation. The simplified heart icon was envisioned as a kind of healing gesture that is transient, a sentimental expression through human emotion over time, that disappears, returns, changes, yet somehow remains.
A Slow Rush
A Slow Rush consists of 180 individual vehicles that were each designed and hand-crafted, made from re-purposed material. This project was based on over a year of personal research and development, beginning with an exploration of the increase in personal vehicle ownership in China and consequently examining how we represent ourselves through our vehicles. The piece captures a frozen moment of chaotic and harmonious flow existing at the historical transition in China between past and present, traditional and modern.
Where Do I Find My City?
Where do I find my city? was based upon 11 individual interviews, remapped to represent a personal yet collective concept of "City". The goal was to present and experiment with the visual and auditory experience of layering these rewritten phrases, through the textures of separate human voices, to build the impression of a city landscape.