This work uses the dam as a metaphor for how societies manage power, access, and control. Like a dam that regulates the flow of water, deciding what passes through and what is held back, social systems determine who receives resources, recognition, or care, and who is excluded. The stones and moss reference the quiet lives that form around these structures, small ecosystems of adaptation and survival that exist within constraint.

How does one attack the image of a tree? Is it the simplified symbol that is struck, or the realism that attempts to imitate nature? In this imagined battlefield, violence hides behind cheerful foam fingers, oversized symbols of support borrowed from sports culture and repurposed as invisible weapons. What once signaled encouragement becomes a quiet form of aggression, where competition and domination are masked by playfulness. The work considers how symbolic gestures can normalize harm, and how systems of conflict often disguise themselves as celebration.

This piece uses the imagery of watermelon and fences to explore themes of consumption, accessibility, and gatekeeping. The watermelon—bright, juicy, and often shared—evokes desire and abundance, while the fence serves as a physical and symbolic barrier. Together, they create a tension between what is offered and what is withheld: who gets access to sweetness, and who is excluded?

Sourced from local thrift stores during a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, these suits reflect on the icon of professionalism and legitimacy. Deconstructed to question why they never "fit"—physically or metaphorically—these garments highlight the exclusion felt as an Asian woman in spaces of traditional validation. Ribbons and medals, crafted from the deconstructed suit fabric, are reattached as ironic decorations of a desired yet elusive recognition.

Featuring a pair of embroidered locks and keys suspended on a necklace, this piece creates a quiet dissonance: the key is never near its corresponding lock, and both sit just out of view. It suggests that the answers we search for may already be with us—only hidden, just beyond reach, or quietly embedded in places we cannot see.

Inspired by the frustration and transience of moving, packing, and unboxing—an endless cycle of constructing and dismantling one’s world. The longing for a future life is distilled into floor maps, representing a cycle of being repeatedly unpacked, crushed, and healed.

Embroidered traffic signs place visual authority and marginalized labor in direct conversation. When stitched by hand, the sign’s authority is both echoed and undermined; its familiar form may still signal urgency, yet the softness of thread invites hesitation. This tension raises questions about how power is constructed through visual language and what happens when symbols of control are rendered through slow, invisible labor.