About
Socio-economics, media consumption, adherence to Western cultural norms, and my underlying guilt about assimilation inform my work. Photography, video, performance, and installation examine these and acknowledge my disjointed relationship to them. This multimedia approach addresses a yearning to reconcile my Chinese background with my upbringing in a uniquely American cultural landscape: in South Central Los Angeles during in the 1980’s.
My photographs seek out seemingly ordinary locations to reveal their distinct identities; although I have memories connected to these places, the specifics are inconsequential to the compositions. An innocuous commercial intersection conjures my younger self driving in days past, but the unpopulated image is quiet and still. My experimental videos use deepfake technology; I use human-image synthesis to combine images of myself with found images and videos from popular Western culture. Replacing the white male lead in iconic,blockbuster films with my Chinese American visage, I examine ideas about the lack of cultural representation in film and its influence on people; by re-contextualizing familiar narratives, my work challenges the traditional notions of masculinity in Hollywood.