Date of Submission

Spring 2023

Academic Program

Studio Arts

Project Advisor 1

Lisa Sanditz

Abstract/Artist's Statement

This exhibition is a celebration of the courage of one to cross boundaries and limitations. As one who has experienced growing up in different cultures, memories of the old times always play a tricky role, day and night, directly influencing my artwork creation. This exhibition gathers a collection of imagery of the fading memories that I intend to depict and recreate, and it includes my distress, happiness, and longing. It is through daily practice of painting that I finally realized that I am a unity of fragments that consists of people, friends and strangers; smells, the smell of food made by my parents, the smell of flowers blooming outside my window at home, and smell of fresh dirt after a rainy day; feelings, of touches and hugs; and so many other things that I read, hear, and see. Consisting of all the above, memories to me are as necessary as oxygen to breathe. However, growing up I gradually learned many limitations, the capacity for one to remember certain things; the rules in all fields that confine us; the distance between one another, both physical and emotional. The imagery of memories is the strong driving force in my ongoing creation of the painting. It is through the recreation of memories in painting, I am then able to create a support system for myself, thus destroying the system that limits me and reconstructing it.

I wish to underlie the emphasis on the boundaries and rules (with special notice in dialogue with the political field) that have been rooted in my body since childhood, and my intention to break them after adulting. Through the spontaneous composition of colors, shapes, lines, and marks, with multiple media used in my painting, the process of creating each piece of work is also a recalling of a certain memory, it is an exploration of self with both unconscious selection of colors and the intention to destroy already-built shapes. To express some unspeakable and sensitive elements that are underlying my works, I chose to incorporate the handwriting in Chinese characters which are embedded in the painting. Focusing on the colors and shapes rather than the image’s representation is my methodology to place myself in a space with nothing left but sensations and conflictions. I tend to treat the canvas as a memory lane, as it is entangled with my thoughts and dreams day and night. This exhibition is an attempt to revive memories, people, and events that have been long forgotten, therefore addressing the conflict entangled with boundaries.

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On-Campus only

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