My dear mother, I wish I could use my palm to unfold your frown 2023 oil on muslin, hand embroidery, crochet, beading,wool felting
50 x 1.5 x 50 cm
My mother always frowns as I could remember from a young age. And ever since she was diagnosed with cancer in 2020, she frowns even more frequently. During the whole pandemic in 2020 I had been living with my mother. I did not know since when I had been internalising my mother's pain as my own pain. I absorbed her pain from her physical illness, also her pain from familial responsibilities ascribed with her gender role in family and society. I imagine, if I have the power, I wish to unfold my mother's frown using my palm. In this painting, I am holding up her frowning using my palm. And I wish to release myself from the pain I unconsciously absorbed from my mother in our intimate relationship.
Hairpin, 2023, oil with hand embroidery on muslin fabric. 30 x 30 cm
Judy drinking wine, 2023, oil with hand embroidery and weaving on muslin fabric, approx. 30 x 30 cm
My practice is deeply situated in my everyday encounters with people. Making is a way for me to mediate the intimate relationships with my mother and my woman friends. My delicate paintings with hand embroidery narrate the warmth, pleasure, desire, and pain that I share with another fleshy body in memories. Living in a society where women’s relationships have been dictated from a patriarchal perspective, where every woman’s role is coordinated to a patriarchal need, my works tell the unspoken emotions and romance in my friendships with other girls, women and female family members. These intimacies drift away from any cultural or verbal signification, and overturn any imposing definition on women's relationships underneath the pain of being inspected by phallogocentrism. And this allows me to meet and understand my presence and the presence of my loved ones in time as being an autonomous human body, rather than a constructed body conferred with priori meanings by any society or culture.