This set investigates how the queer body is represented and ministered by the public while leaving marks on the extended body form: color-changing and thermal wax balls via inputting temperature and touches and outputting sound and visuals.

State of Flux (Ensemble)

https://vimeo.com/659062551

An act of confrontation in response to surrendering self-body imagery. The wax balls parallel one's head, hands, genitals, and feet, welcoming warmth, touches, and exchanges.

State of Flux (Self Autonomy)

Two identical-sized ﬁber cubes, one with the structure that holds ﬁrmly as a cube and the other as a wearable for myself. This pose, act, and answer the question that one's home and self can never be the same. In the documentation series, I performed as "the copy" with the wearable blindly trying to mimic "the original". The performance explores the possibility of going back to the original, whether "the original" is home, places, or identities. One will always be the reﬂection and "the copy" of "the original."

Untitled (Original & Copy)

"Penumbra asked shadow: "Before you moved you stop. Before you sat, now you get up. Why are you so inconstant?” Shadow said: “Shall I wait before doing anything? Is what I am waiting for also waiting for something?Shall I wait for the scales of a snake, or the wings of a cicada?How do I know why it is so? How do I know why it isn't so?” 

This work takes on Zhuangzi's philosophical tale and interrupts the existence of Penumbra via a queer lens. This process is experimentation on my own queer body, trying to prove the meaning of existence of penumbra: A proﬁle silhouette projection on liquid light emulsion coated muslin fabric.

Untitled (self portrait)

Untitled (sack) is a fiber sculpture that reflects my time during quarantine as an artist. The front and back images are avocado bonsais I created during the lockdown and printed via cyanotype and later bleach and dye with natural walnut ink. The sculpture is presented as a soft cushion, as well as an open invitation to hug, touch, wear, and lay on to regain familiarity with human touches both materially, psychically, and emotionally.  

Untitled (sack)

If you don't know what you are looking at now, they are not just puffy standing rectangles. These are dunnage bags designed specifically for overseas cargo shipping. This work honors the integrity of raw materials: How is it produced, where is it from, and how was it documented? As supporting shipping materials, these bags are initially made, and signed tasks are the security of objects in the crate—the composition here highlights the often secondary categorized things and brings the hidden familiarity to the foreground. The group of three can read as defending one with the orientation facing outside or protecting one with the direction facing inside. I intend to project a shared experience of one's community that gives, passes, and shares family institutions' intelligence. 

 The tags and belts of Untitled (0) and Untitled (1, 2, 3) intensified the bags' bodily visual description, yet the numbering system dehumanized its hallmark. Meanwhile, the gesture of a group of three is reaching the individual one reveals the coexistence of generational trauma through migration. Labeling from zero instead of one highlights the foundation, the starts, and those who came before us.

Untitled (0); Unitiled (1, 2, and 3)

5’11’’ is a modular sculpture made with 28 individual wax cubes that stack up to my height. These wax cubes are a blend of beeswax and paraffin wax and colored with UV thermal pigment. The formation of each cube carries ten to twenty percent of the remains from the previous unit, with different ratios of pigments added to it. Seen as individuals having autonomy, they interweave based on the shared collective body—the color changes based on the temperature and light in the given environment. 5’11’’ is prolonged and spontaneous durational work that takes one to observe more than once in different temperatures and locations.

These cubes as a whole reflect on adaptability, changes, and self-doubt of alienness and queerness. What to adjust with and who to change for? They are quiet, still, and veiled. They are waiting to be seen, transformed, and compounded. 

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