In Chinese society, red lanterns were once associated with brothels as a fetish of sexuality and selling of one's body. The divided snapshots of the lanterns symbolize the divorce of the physical and the spiritual body of marginalized women. Featured along with a stylized barcode--so familiar in contemporary consumer society--the painting is meant to refer to the ways that women's bodies can be treated as commodities.

 

In my paintings, installations and performance art, I explore the ideas of “travel,” “transition,” and “adaptation” in different levels and spectrums – physically, temporally, culturally, linguistically, emotionally, and spiritually. As I immigrated to the United States in my late-teenage year/early adulthood, the experience of cultural shift and abrupt loss of the communities in which I had been actively engaged changed my view of myself, my root, and my relationship to the “other” worlds. In my artworks, I am interested in contesting the psychological landscape and temporal shift affected by memories, history, as well as the cultural and built environments. I use references of mythologies, folk arts productions, historical iconographies, as well as maps of reality and imagination in my art-making. The works I create often incorporate words, references of classical poems in calligraphy, and metallic colors to manifest the shimmering past.