The arguably simple question “Where are you from?” can be tricky to answer these days. Identity as a concept tends to morph when linked to geography, citizenship, ethnicity, and race, and this shift strongly affects my work’s imagery as an Asian American living in the Deep South. Taking cues from both Eastern and Western images, folklore, art histories, and popular cultures, my art features cultural landscapes that look simultaneously familiar and strange. I twist and hybridize these sources to tell new stories about various global lives.

Throughout my work, these inspirations range from Korean folk art and temple paintings to Mexican masks, Milagros, and fortune cookies; from pop artist Roy Lichtenstein’s yellow brushstrokes of blonde women, to banana peels and peaches, the state fruit of Georgia, where I have lived for the past fifteen years. I tease and change these lexicons so that they are familiar yet difficult to identify in these new contexts.

I want all my work to be playful and meaningful at the same time.