April 14-17
Fetch the Moon from the Seabed (海底撈月) (excerpt)
2021
Inkjet print, 21" x 30" each
and counting
2020
billboard
Artist Statement
My mother has lived away from her homeland for thirty years and I now live two thousand eight hundred miles away from mine. Why do we yearn for a place we rationally know is not the same as in our memory or imagination? From the soft blue of retreating horizons to the illusory, deep blue of the ocean, the color is emblematic of the permanently unattainable. The color of distance and of desire.
Inspired by absence, relational ruptures, and slippages in translation, my work engages the yearning that emerges from distance and displacement. Loss and longing are intertwined, and to fully experience both requires time and endurance. Whether it is the labor demanded by language-learning and cultural assimilation or the quiet missing of another, I seek to make mental exertion and emotional endurance felt in one’s body.
Rather than offer quick solutions, I ask viewers to submerge into longing. To acknowledge desire as a sensation worth cherishing rather than an obstruction to overcome.