safer than words (2026)

The shape at the entrance is a radical: a component of written Chinese, not a word on its own. It sits at the top of other characters, and nearly everything it appears in has to do with shelter: home, room, safety, the space under a roof.

I emigrated from China to the U.S. at 18, and I make work about how language carries the values we inherit. My subject has been written Chinese, mostly seal script, an ancient form where characters still look like the things they name. A character is built from smaller parts, each with its own meaning. The word for "good" is a woman beside a child. Change one component and "to raise" becomes "to discard." I make these words as paper objects and let them shift, so a meaning I was taught as fixed turns out to be a decision someone made.

But the shapes drift. What starts as a character becomes a form with no meaning to inherit.

This work has followed that drift nearly all the way. Apart from the radical at the door, these are almost wordless: color, mark, weight. Making paper is what steadies me, and I've come to think that abstraction is safer than words.

I'm finding out what's left when the language goes.

All works 2026, made at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Longwood University, and the University of Arkansas.

  1. Untitled, Handmade paper (pigmented cotton and abaca blend), approx. 21.5 × 64 inches (irregular)

  2. Untitled, Handmade paper (pigmented cotton and abaca blend, cotton, abaca, and flax pulp paint), 30 × 40 inches (six panels, tiled)

  3. Untitled, Handmade paper (pigmented cotton and abaca), 20.5 × 50 inches (three panels, tiled)

  4. Untitled, Handmade paper (pigmented cotton and abaca), 40.5 × 33.5 inches (four panels, tiled)

  5. Untitled, Ceramics (red clay), 7 × 17 × 8 inches (irregular)

  6. Untitled, Handmade paper (pigmented cotton and abaca blend, cotton, abaca, and flax pulp paint), 126 × 69 inches (twelve panels, tiled)

  7. Untitled, Handmade paper (pigmented cotton and abaca blend, cotton, abaca, and flax pulp paint), 18 × 24 inches (two panels, tiled)

  8. Untitled, Handmade paper (pigmented cotton and abaca, flax pulp paint), 22 × 30 inches

  9. Untitled, Handmade paper (pigmented cotton and abaca blend, cotton, abaca, and flax pulp paint), 31.5 × 23 inches

  10. Untitled, Handmade paper (pigmented cotton and abaca, kozo, thread inclusion), approx. 46 × 70 inches (two overlapping pieces, irregular)

  11. Untitled, Handmade paper (pigmented cotton and abaca, flax pulp paint), 31.75 × 121 inches (diptych, 31.75 × 58 inches and 28.5 × 55.25 inches)

  12. Untitled, Handmade paper (pigmented cotton and abaca), 18 × 24 inches (two panels, tiled)

  13. Untitled, Handmade paper (pigmented cotton and abaca, flax pulp paint), 22.5 × 30 inches

All | Print/Paper | Time-Based Art | Installation | Book Art | Graphic Design | Sculpture | Curation | Writing