INTERBEING SERIES, 2017-2018

Artist Statement 

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​Migration has changed my perception of cultural identity and traditional art. I encountered with a new culture as an outsider and began to realize how much my identity was impacted through the adjustment process. The consequences of displacement and the ongoing conflict in everyday life have dominated my way of thinking and creating artwork. It also provided me a distant vision to look at the traditional art and culture through a microscopic level and discover many unknown territories. As much as I loved my cultural heritage, I made works that are not simply to celebrate my culture but to point out the experiences of being different, isolation and lost in an unfamiliar environment. As time goes on, those experiences are constantly changed and intertwined with each other to create a new cultural identity.
 
My paintings reflected a multicultural perspective, brought together the oriental undertone and abstraction. The challenge during the whole process of creating the artwork is making it visually attractive without losing a sense of its cultural specificity. My paintings also suggest the important of intangible elements, the feeling of emptiness, alien-ness through patterns of absence and in-between spaces. They are struggling to reconnect within the whole composition. Beneath what we see on each of the painting surfaces, layers that are overlaid by another layer, parts that are destroyed and covered. As many of untold stories, they become invisible.
 
At the heart of my artwork, I believe, is the attempt to harmonize the contradiction between past and present, invisible and visible, East and West. My desire to use the power of visual language transcends national and cultural boundaries.