Intro Questions

What kinds of learning environments are/have been most exciting for you?

I feel most engaged in discussion intensive seminars. The introduction of new critical thought is satisfying in a way that production rarely is for me. I enjoy both the individual and community effort in parsing a dense text, processing notions in the configuration of language, and drawing transdisciplinary reference to the material. Articulation, communication, argument, and analysis is very important to my practice, and my development as an individual.

In a studio setting, I believe I thrive in very open-ended curriculums with initial experiences being dedicated to research and discussion, and later being dedicated to the production of a body of work.

List five questions that you want to fuel your work?

How can you subvert the institution of critique itself?

What is the relationship between image and picture? How does this consider the viewer?

Is this an idea that is more poignantly written than experienced? If so, why is it important to abstract it?

When do you stop considering beauty?

How are you relevant or innovative (what does this mean, is it important) in a landscape of universal acceptance?

If you were to conceive of one art assignment/prompt for yourself what would that be?

1. Create something that fundamentally disagrees with your worldview as a artist. It should be something that you want to create, but that you would never consider within your body of work. Consider your desire to make this work and the legitimacy of your feelings preventing it.

 

2.  Make scent art. Your audience cannot directly experience the scent.

 

Do do you use art history as an ingredient in your work?  How or why not?

I believe all contemporary work is inextricable from associations of its precursors. That being said, I find myself especially invested in the thought processes and cultural phenomenons of past creation. I am often more excited to learn the philosophies of certain movements than to conceive similar innovation in my own work, but this is a daunting task for most. I’ve experienced a significant amount of stagnation because art history is such an overwhelming portion of my academic excitement and inspiration, and I repeatedly have the thought process that I should not simply make art about art. Well, this is untrue. Emergences in modernism were often reactions to art history (Jean Dubuffet’s Olympia). But for me, now, I do not know how to make potent work discussing contemporary meta arguments about art itself. I feel comfortable speaking, and writing it, but not creating experiences based in it.  I feel that I should not only engage in the conceptual, theoretical practices that already possess thoroughly investigated history. This has led me to, I believe, more frequently utilize the histories of other fields I’m intrigued by.

Still, I often return to historically loaded imagery (water/landscape/body) as well as subverted intentions and contexts, primarily as a way to manipulate its references. I’ve inherited advice from modernists, questioning the restrictions and being of painting, and other mediums.

Does your lack of sleep make you feel stronger or weaker?

Sleep is the single most taxing activity that I am perpetually required to participate in. Lack of sleep feels like a crushing force, numbingly deteriorating my sense of self-worth, my ethical systems, and my feeling of humanity. Over sleeping plagues me with infinite fatigue and a disgusting feeling of claustrophobia within my own skin. I begin to loathe my furniture. I haven’t had a good dream in two years. I have seasonal depression during the winter months, which drastically affects my nocturnal habits. It always feels like I require mote sleep than the average person my age, but I prioritize every academic endeavor over it. It’s the characteristic that I’m least proud of, and most trying to change. 

What subjects in the world outside of art most interest you?

Philosophy –Aesthetics, Technology, Self, Mind, Feminist, Ethics
Food
Linguistics
Theory and criticism (art but also literature)
Social Justice
Chinese history/culture

How does your race and issues surrounding race influence your work?

I am a second generation immigrant who knows elements of her culture, but does not understand her language, growing up in a community almost entirely absent of Asian Americans. I frequently feel like a fraud. I’m learning Mandarin Chinese, but my family spoke Taishanese, a rare, dying, informal, mutually unintelligible dialect. Even if my heritage was more carefully preserved by my parents, I could not speak to my peers. The desire to incorporate my journey into reemergence of culture has continuously grown over the past year. I want to explore my exposure to language that is simultaneously my own and not my own.

Are you indoorsy or outdoorsy? Can you describe ways in which you have thrived in interior architectural human made spaces? Can you describe ways in which you have thrived in exterior or non-human constructed spaces?
As an staunchly non-religious person, Cathedrals are the interiors that have undeniably had the greatest psychological impact on me. I’m extremely fixated on the idea of my body being overwhelmed, by a physical entity, by history, by light, by warmth. My relationship to nature follows this thread. It’s strange; I’m unfortunately addicted to my computer screen and contemporary comforts, I hate bugs, and I hate cold, but I only feel truly happy outdoors (in warm weather). I constantly want to be immersed in water, but I’m a horrible swimmer. I often think I should curate my life  so that I may be surrounded by breathtaking landscapes for my entire life, but that life fundamentally contradicts most other things I hope to pursue. I draw inspiration directly from both historical architecture, and perception of natural landscapes. I despise the average building; I find posturing in rooms difficult and painful, and average lighting/structure unexciting.