Upon arriving in Itoshima, I was welcomed by a vast sea of rice paddies. The fields are “pre-steamed” by the humid summer heat before the harvest, releasing the rich aroma of ripening rice. The rice is cooking, the land is quaking, and the earth feels wonderfully alive!

Inspired by this vibrant setting, I began a quirky ritual: taking a vacuum cleaner on a stroll like a loyal dog. Together, we roamed the country roads, soaking up the warm, fragrant air. The dust specks, bird feathers, bits of vegetation, anonymous insects, and stray rice grains we gathered became the ingredients for incense. When burned, this incense releases all these tiny, fragmented realities back to the earth, completing a playful cycle of transformation and return.

Through this whimsical process, I delve into the intricate dance between human presence and nature, contemplating the cycles of growth, decay, and renewal that sustain life in surprising and delightful ways.

糸島に到着したとき、私は広大な稲田の海に迎えられました。収穫の前に、稲は湿った夏の蒸気で「予熱」されており、ご飯のような濃厚な香りを放っています。米が炊かれ、大地が震え、地球は奇妙な生命力に満ちています！

この活気に満ちた環境に触発されて、私はちょっと変わった儀式を始めました。それは、掃除機を連れて犬のように散歩することです。私たちは一緒に田舎道を歩き、温かく芳しい空気を吸い込みました。集めたほこりの粒、鳥の羽、植物のかけら、名もなき虫たち、そして落ちた稲粒が、香の材料となりました。香を焚くとき、これらの細かく断片的な現実は再び大地に戻り、楽しげな変化と回帰の循環を完了します。

この奇想天外なプロセスを通じて、私は人間の存在と自然との間にある複雑なダンスを探り、生命を支える成長、衰退、再生のサイクルについて深く考えています。その循環は、予想外でありながらも愉快な方法で続いています。

Glass is so cool. Glass is so hot.

Here, I present you with this concept album, Ice Cold, where I gleaned some sweaty language from the hot-shop and cast them into lyrics, cut a glass block into a piece of heavy glass music, and used my breath to sculpt romantic fantasies –just like a real glass artist.

In-progress music video.

This piece is a component of my up and coming project: From Scratch: Tasting the Tenderness in Food Production. I hope to use this tutorial video to invite immigrants with Asian heritage in Tacoma, WA area to join an immersive ASMR cooking show in which participants will be led through a series of collective cooking activities to make dumplings. This project aims to bring awareness to the often diminished labor of immigrants, as well as provide space for collective healing from the trauma of the global pandemic.

In Spring 2021, I created this guided walking tour between Glenside Station and the Grey Towers Castle with my student apprentices from Arcadia University. In this project, we invite people to listen and walk. Through walking, we support our community’s well-being, healing the scars of the Covid-19 Pandemic and uniting people across different backgrounds.

The student apprentices are Olivia Armacost, Tamara Grace Davis, Timothy Elder, Pamela Ojopi, Lexie Puls, Rey’Na Riggans, Jessica Smith, and Tess Weber.

This project is sponsored by Arcadia Public Art, a program of Arcadia University. Created with support from Cheltenham Township and Old York Road Historical Society, as well as many more residents and friends of our community.

To listen to the full audio guide or access the transcript, please visit Here

This video clip is from workshop 3: Imaginative score-translation.

This project is generously supported by the art gallery at TCNJ. Special thanks to Margaret Pezalla-Granlund, Cara Giddens, Dr. Eric Laprade, Florencia Pierri; as well as all the lovely participants: Chris Cancglin, Bryan Cook, Miranda Inglese, Maxwell Mellies, James Mikula, Joseph Reo, Emma Schell, Melissa Schaeffer, Joseph Gibbs, Alexis Silverman, Shrish Jawadiwar, Lillian Hoffman, James Fox and Esther Morales.

An Orchestra at Elsewhere transforms the museum into a collaborative performance using items found within the museum as musical instruments. Visitors can re-enact this orchestra and play the same instruments by following a museum map of the first floor.

The orchestra utilizes miscellaneous objects like vintage children toys, architectural spiral poles, the museum’s doorbell, register station, swing, and even including the microwave, pots, and pans in the kitchen—by connecting objects from the original thrift store, the art collection, and everyday utilitarianism, this piece blurs boundaries between musical practices, the notion of art and the quotidian.

Special thanks to local composer Treya Nash (UNCG MFA) for the music consultation; local piano tuner and rebuilder John Johanson (Mosaic Piano Services) for fabricating the string instrument under the Window Theater swing; performing musicians: Tyler Tyson, Janke Seltsam, Nicholas Barrett II, Riley Cox, Treya Nash, Eva Wǒ, Jes Hoyle, Paige Reitterer, Steve Winfield Meyer, and Jesse Kudler; as well as Elsewhere Museum’s support.

Swing harp

Scores:

How to Clean a Window---StayHome Edition

*Made for Glass Art Society 2020 conference. The original conference in Sweden was canceled due to COVID-19, but it proceeded online.

Inspired by the history of the glass industry in Finland, I recognize glass’s inherent linguistic properties. It is transparent yet fuzzy, delivers information while setting up segregation. Glass is not a symbol for translation. Glass is translation.

The desire for windows opened up the glass industry in Finland. The Industrial Revolution built factories and glass windows were highly needed. Under Swedish rule, Finland’s large forests meant a great amount of fuel for heating up the glass furnaces. Therefore, it became an ideal place for making glass. When humans immersed themselves in fanatical machinery productions, what did glass mean for them? Light? Nature? Fantasy? Security?

When the industrial revolution welcomes the age of Anthropocene, what can we do under self-quarantine? With unprecedented globalization, we are not only sharing economy, but health. This performative workshop offers comfort from paranoia and invites people to reestablish trust in communities. By connecting our window cleaning routines together, our solitude transforms into solidarity.

In collaboration with artist Liz McCarthy, I worked with the 8th graders from the Fishers Island School. Liz taught the students how to make whistles by using clay dug from the Fishers Island clay pit; I led an anti-choir workshop with the students utilizing the whistles they made. The performance is in response to the bird calls on the island.

Two-channel video, stereo audio from speakers, stereo audio from the headphone, wall selves

This project is born from an investigation in questioning our communications and miscommunications.

I conducted a group of choir singers to perform Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Although I have no training as a conductor, I used gestures (inspired by body language from everyday life) to direct the singers. They, as professionally trained choir singers wearing double-layered soundproof earmuffs, could only interpret and respond independently. Nuanced power relations in a communication process were performed through fingertips, vibrating vocal chords, genuine confusion, dysfunctional translation, isolation of a collective and gradually collected insecurities and solidarities.

Lollipops.

When I say

花(flower),

虫(insect),

鸟(bird),

兽(monster),

the negative spaces of my mouth,  cast in sugar. 

Listen to the music

photo credit: Stephanie Price

The sound of thinking from:
Ed Sanders
Taylor swift
Zhang Yining
Mo Yan
Jack Kerouac
Judit Polgár
John Cage
Carl Gustav Jung
Marcel Duchamp
Ho Chi Minh
Umm Kulthum
Meryl Streep
Romila Thapar
Neil Armstrong
Akira Kurosawa
Beth
Michel Foucault
Hsing Yun
Rosa Parks
Yang Jiang
Merce Cunningham
Ann Hamilton
Rita Levi Montalcini
Xu Bing
Lang Ping
Miuccia Prada
Yao Ming
Tu Youyou
Yoko ono
Stephen Chow
Nelson Mandela
Ueno Juri
Jorge Luis Borges
Ernesto Sabato
Jiang Zemin
Matty B
Terence Tao
Rick Rosner
Gary Kasparov
Romanieo Jr.
Asbel Kiprop
a 5-year-old
Liao Yimei
Joan Acocella
a 4-year-old
Edwige Fenech
Zahia Dehar
Osamu Tezuka
Karena Lam
Björk
Lyca Gairanod
Meytal Cohen
Song Seung Heon
Joewell
Meng Yifei
Tran Anh Hung
McDull
Stuart Hall
Jeanette Winterson
Tan Dun
Gabriel García Márquez
Pablo Neruda

Inspired by glass blowing, this piece shows the impossibility to externalize human feelings through verbal language. I compare the power of the breath in sculpting hot glass to the power of speech in word formation. Soap bubbles became the evidence. It is not only a love letter, a romantic struggle, but also a contained way of expressing for the females which is deeply grounded in my culture.

Poem with images from 3D scanning of a glass object

(Reload the page to replay it)

Poem and image on a wall

Take a walk with It (download and zoom in)

Poem, image, mirror paper on a wall

Poem, image

Video, Projector, Headphone, Chair, 

Inhale! inhale! inhale!

Between English and Chinese, the water and air, a lost monologist and the alien land, this piece offers a first-person multi-cultural experience, an intimate conversation that correlates the surroundings, as well as an invitation of getting lost in the untranslatable.

Filling with food, speaking in an insistent voice; ambiguous, like dream talk, but combined with various ingredients. 

Through utilizing the two functions of the mouth – talking and eating, convincing and nourishing – I explore the dichotomous concept between romantic fallacies of the moon and the mundane patterns of daily life on the earth. Tasty, gross, funny, angry, impolite… I would rather believe and be wrong.