I create work from the perspective of a first-generation Asian minority and a female living in a foreign environment who struggles daily with the decision to assimilate or stand alone. Forced femininity has shaped my mind and body, gestures and expressions, language and behavior, and more. My paintings use the dualism of the human body to investigate these perspectives.

The female body as an emotive object has long carried the dual symbolism of restraint and violation (abuse), simultaneously hiding and revealing. Playing with these binaries, I explore and question the formerly gendered languages that are embedded in our bodies, minds, and identities.

In my work, female subjects are situated in a potentially narrative realm that suggests emotions checked and femininity reinterpreted through seduction and obstruction. Using layers of geometric shapes, simplified forms, and lines to deconstruct the traditional picture plane, I reinforce power relations between my figures and the structures around them. The process of creating a visual field of distortion and spatial disorder echoes the fractured history of my land, my psyche, and, to some extent, my identities.