Enchiridion

36 pages, saddle-stitch binding and accordion fold, risograph and xerox, 5 x 10.25 inches
A multifaceted exploration of the language of worship, the mythologizing effect of fame, and the trickster-god powers of Cate Blanchett. In four parts—lexicon, cosmogenesis, epiphany, and artifacts—its amalgam of manipulated and original imagery, tropes related to divinity, and motifs repeating across multiple narratives imagines Blanchett as a figure between reality and infinite possibility. Finalist for the Broken Pencil Awards.

book/mark I: A Name

12 pages, saddle-stitch binding, risograph printed, 2 x 7 inches
First in an on-going series of bookmark-shaped books, each on seemingly aimless, but unshakeable, thoughts. A Name is a brief, personal reflection on what it might mean to make a person. With images that allude to Greek mythology, Penelope, “the name without a girl,” stands in for a latent wish to have a daughter.

book/mark II: Wendr

12 pages, saddle-stitch binding, risograph printed, 2 x 7 inches
Second in the series, Wendr is a spell, cast on me by a stick I saw on the ground. I’ve never been able to forget it.

Somewhere, a witch wanders, wandless.

The Word Sm*t

40 pages, staple-bound, xerox, 4.25 x 5.5 inches
“Eroticism is, above all else, exclusively human: it is sexuality socialized and transfigured by the imagination and the will of human beings. In every erotic encounter there is an invisible and ever-active participant: imagination, desire. Octavio Paz

Brief descriptions of random Tumblr posts after the platform’s ban on adult content and of Google search results for kinky images are imposed on a grid sparsely populated with vague fleshy drawings. The result feels out the extent to which erotica is a work of the mind, gesturing toward the role of withholding in desire.

Endless Distances

28 pages, staple-bound, 1st edition offset, 2nd edition risograph, with offset cover, 4.25 x 2 inches
“Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances. I must have been the same to her. Robert Hass

Three women in different worlds tell themselves stories about the ones they love. Is it a futile practice in the face of obstacles between them and love? The book’s panoramic shape frames distances physical, emotional, and temporal.

Between Us

12 pages, staple-bound, xerox, 4.5 x 6.5 inches
When two share a vision, how do they know they see the same thing? A strange occurrence will pull a couple closer together, or break them apart.

A version of this story appeared in the anthology Linequality.

Are You Even Listening?

20 pages, accordion fold, risograph printed, 2.75 x 3.25 inches
One asks the question, and we spiral into the other’s ear in search of an answer.

birding—unbirding

12 pages, flutter book, offset with risograph cover, 3.25 x 6 inches
A woman’s grief spills into her sense of self and way of life.  Legible backwards and forwards, remembering and forgetting her grief are enacted by the direction of reading. The cycle transforms her again and again. 

Butter Dust

Pakiramdam

Installation at Co-Prosperity (Chicago, IL), digital prints on organza and paper, acrylic paint, vinyl, wood, fishing wire
Photos courtesy of Co-Prosperity by Colectivo Multipolar
Pakiramdam, meaning intuition or feeling, explores how geographic and temporal distances turn the familiar into the otherworldly, even the ghostly. Yet any distance can be closed by moments of recognition, a sense of kinship, or a memory. The project encodes my family’s history of immigration and migration, the in-betweenness of mixed-race identity, and embodiments of hybridity along the way. It interrogates how we locate ourselves, not just within place and time, but in relation to others; what it means to be present to others in spite of physical absence or distance; and notions of authenticity and synthesis in relation to cultural and personal identities.

Like ghosts, we come together, overlap, and drift past each other in the space of the project, a space in Chicago and in the countries of our minds.

I’m calling from a great distance

The Annex, Spudnik Press Cooperative (Chicago, IL), screen prints, laserjet prints, and xerox transfers
Photos courtesy of Spudnik Press
A series of varied-edition screenprints and an artist’s book relate the communications between a lighthouse keeper and an interplanetary explorer. A dive into wanderlust, solitude, and homesickness, the work uses the vastness of oceans and space to illuminate the smallness of humanity and the fragility of our bonds with each other.

The prints are divided into two sets. One is a sequence of a woman turning around in an increasingly figurative landscape. The other depicts planets and alien environments. The icons and gestures, which cross over between the prints and the book, become the intimate language of the characters’, and the audience’s, shared experiences. The solo exhibition culminated my work in the Spudnik Press Artist Residency.

Kitchen Table Stories

Curated by Melissa Raman Molitor
Evanston Art Center (Evanston, IL)
“The Kitchen Table Stories exhibition is a celebration of stories shared by local artists who identify as Asian, South Asian, and Pacific Islander. Artists were asked to share the stories that have been passed down to them from ancestors through family and friends, and create work that reflects ther own lived experiences. The result is an exploration of the intersections of immigration, citizenship, race, culture, social identity, multigenerational relationships, and family history. Melissa Raman Molitor, curator

This collection of woodcut prints, Salita, is a personal study of storytelling that nourishes us across generations, geographies, and cultures. The prints depict stories my grandfather told me at dinner when I was growing up—Filipino folktales mixed with his anecdotes—and how he told them—his gestures as he spoke and his words as I remember them. I ate his stories up, until they became part of me. And through these prints, I retell them, and they become part of you.