Exhibits

ARTIST RECEPTION: May 2, 2024, 5:30pm-7:30pm, 2nd floor Gallery

As an immigrant to the US from China, feeling out of place geographically, psychologically and linguistically significantly impacts my way of seeing the world. The displacement of people into a different culture can strengthen our connections to the original culture and show us how deeply it has shaped our ways of thinking. But it also gives us opportunities to question the traditional values we have always held and taken for granted.

Through observing my own relationships with my family and friends in these two distant places, I find ways to explore our attachment to and detachment from our family and habitat, and question the role of individualism in family oriented culture. Growing up in Chinese culture and now immersed in American culture, I am always aware of the two contrasting-sometimes conflicting-cultures meeting, blending and colliding within myself. The encounter between adaptation and identity challenges one’s loyalty to past and future.

This series of paintings, based on fragments extracted from my daily life with my child, focuses on family dynamics by showing the world through the eyes of a child, or the world of the child through my eyes. I see the beauty and sadness of this world through his eyes, and I use his courage to face the unexplainable. The work contains childlike graffiti, playful shapes, humorous visual language and bright colors. Through these paintings, I hope to start a dialogue with myself as well as a dialogue between myself and the audience.