Artist Statement

I am an artist of Chinese and ethnic minority background. Growing up in an ethnic minority family, I learned Chinese ink art from my grandpa, a calligrapher, and studied patterns and materials with my grandma, a Mien craftsman. It was the start of my art life there. After moving to Wuhan for my education, I went back to Guilin for most of my school breaks to reconnect with the influences of my hometown. While living with my grandparents, I was able to continue my initial interest in art by participating in my grandpa's workshops there. After primary school in Wuhan, I expanded my interest to writing and comics and sometimes both. 

However, it was not until the summer of 2014, when I started university in America, that I realized I should make art my subject and career. After becoming a studio art major at Rice University, I began exploring my specific areas of passion. I serendipitously found painting along with drawing and installation. With these mediums I feel most comfortable with, I explore the individual experience of living a discreet geography and struggling with multiple identities just as I do. Apart from my studio life, I also received an art history degree from Rice University, and I finished my MA degree in Critical Studies (Art Criticism) at the California Institute of Arts in Valencia, California. I am currently pursuing an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Art History and Theory specializing in Chinese media art history and its relationship with the Eastern Body at the the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

As a result, the audience can always observe a propensity in my artworks to combine the theoretical aspect and the material/making aspect of Chinese and American art, which I see as an influence from my second background as a curator and writer. In fact, I am constantly incorporating textual elements including poetry, criticism, and film, into my installations and watercolors. No matter what mediums I utilize, I strive to bring out the intriguing and urgent tension between tradition and contemporality, East and West, in a non-binary fashion. 

I believe I will continue to explore more subjects and mediums but always in the service of my objective: to allow my audiences to live their experiences through me, an individual vehicle of discreet life and culture, just like anyone else.