From an early age, I was acquainted with feelings of moving and change. It started with jumping between middle schools in Beijing, then moving across the world to New York. I gathered new habits and cultures with each move. I also increasingly find myself juggling between many different ideas like a tug of war and trying to find a balance in between. The searches for clarity and answers inspired me to reflect on the fundamental elements within people and explore various ways to tell tales of the experiences, conflicts, and shared feelings. They have also led me to reconsider how I understand Chinese traditions and cultures, making me reinterpret them as a generative starting point rather than limiting rules and overarching prescriptions.
Amongst the environmental shifts and new information intake, I use painting and drawing as the mediums to build connections between the physical body and the mental and emotional experiences. They became languages where my awareness materializes into visions, images, and thoughts to share with others. They are also the mediums where I negotiate with my immediate surroundings and respond to the broader context in the world. Painting also reminds me of the passing of time and the cultivation of experiences. Each work, whether a failure or a success (how do we measure these anyway?), adds on to other works and is part of the whole painting process.
My recent works explore multiple ideas such as feelings of closeness and separation, love and detest, and the longing for a place of landing. They also consider the relationship between individuals and the communities. Many works also draw from tradition as a point of departure, reimagining Chinese ink painting to see what might emerge from it. These ideas layer onto each other and together form various stories and tales.
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