Artist Statement
My work contains the memories of family, childhood, and bad memories that I want to forget. The struggle that I have, is to insist on my own ideas and doing what I want to do as an artist. Growing up, I have always had a hard time speaking to and staying with my father. I could not decide what I wanted to do. He has always decided where I should go, what should I do, and which classes I should pick. For these reasons, I could not remove my unwanted memories out of my mind.
I took a mirror and imagined it as one of my many bad memories. The broken mirror is representative of the bad memories that persist. After breaking the mirror, I wrapped it in plastic and sewed it shut. It has always impacted me. I symbolically turned this bad memory into a beautiful and shining memory of the past. In time, memories fade allowing for a renewed perspective. I used transparent plastic in my art to show I want my father to understand and listen to me. I feel stronger than the first time that I arrived in America. However, my father has always made me feel weak. The long sleeves in my other works represents the times that I try to decide things for myself, but my father stops me and tells me what should I do. Everytime I try to do anything that is not my choice, I try to hide my feelings, but it always makes me sick. My work is represented through monochromatic colors to show the moments when I am doing anything that is not my choice. Additionally, it shows moments where I lose my mind and start losing my sight of the future. When I do things against my will, I have no passion and no emotion just like a person who does not have a soul. Most of my wearable pieces require the help of others to put on, through which I want to show that I want my father to understand me and be supportive of my decisions. Through my work, I want to represent how my undesired memories can be manifested in physical forms, creating not only an emotional burden, but a physical one as well.
