Series: The Invisible Asians
Title: Transforming Anxiety into A Scholar’s Rock #3 , #1 #2
Year: 2020, 2021
Medium: sculpture and photography | silicone, silicone pigment, metal print(dye-sublimation printing on aluminum)
Dimension: approx. 6 x 4 x 4 in (sculpture #3), approx. 7¼ x 5 x 4 in (sculpture #1)/approx. 6 x 7 x 4 in (sculpture #2), 11 x 17 in each (photography)
This series of sculptures reflects my recent observations and several incidents related to the COVID-19 pandemic, police brutality, and attacks on Asian Americans in the US. By employing body imagery as a receiver and reflector, I explore the possibilities of using our physical bodies as vehicles for reconstructing the trauma and social violence to which we have directly or indirectly been exposed. Using my intertwined hands, I have created skin-toned or jade-colored silicone sculptures of abstract shapes that reify the human body deformed by outer forces. To allow contemplation of our current world, the sculptures are displayed on rock stands to be observed as we would a scholar’s rocks.
The reference and cultural symbolism of scholar’s rocks, the jade colors, and the skin tones lighter than other Asian origins reflect my East Asian ethical and cultural background, my diaspora of immigrating to another country, and the criticism of situations that regard Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners in the US. Through these sculptures, created as a part of a micro-landscape, I examine and reveal a personal history of being an East Asian that has been deeply remolded and twisted by racism in the US.
