"I’m allowed to lay down what my family gave me", 2023 (photo and text transfer on muslin, cotton, tulle, wool, wire ) This project pieces together a new relationship to my cultural identities as an estranged, queer daughter of Taiwanese immigrants. Childhood photos, old documents, images from my family's immigration journey, and testimony are image-transferred by hand and woven into a ghostly understanding of what has clothed me. This project was a ritual to transform the regrets, silences, hopes, and anger inherited from my immigrant family and ancestors into a specter that I can honor and come to a new way of understanding.
"A House Made of Water", 2017 (Sibling Rivalry Press) My debut collection of poetry examines the inheritance of stories and cyclical nature of trauma, as experienced by a queer firstborn child/daughter of immigrants in the US..
"I walked to the end of myself and saw there was no end", 2024 (handwoven wool) This tapestry series began as a conversation with my partner in which we talked about hope, and what radical possibilities there may be after we seemingly reach the ends of our ourselves and our capacity to hold pain and injustice. I thought about the incredible love and strength of organizers working towards liberation for all peoples, in the face of insurmountable exploitation and war. I thought about all of us who are struggling to care for ourselves and one another in an exhaustingly capitalist world. I thought about my personal struggles with depression and PTSD, how there were so many times in my life when I thought I couldn’t, wouldn’t make another day. And yet, something else seems to grip us. I walked to the end to what I thought was possible, and looked at what could be there.
"I build this body" (Series: This House We Care For), 2024, handwoven wool. I live with PTSD and dissociation, and often feel detached from my own body and this land. These tapestries are part of a series negotiating new relationships to both. As I learn more about how I can trust and respect this land and its indigenous stewards, I also yearn to return to my body–so I can be present and active in the ways I give back and support. Weaving tapestries is slow work, and with every stitch I hope to pay attention to my body, to the kelp forests I’ve been raised by, and the flowers that return each spring, and meditate on what is my responsibility as a settler on this coast.
