Artist of installations and paintings on ritual in public life
I grew up secular and when people I loved died, my interest in the role of ritual in public life began. My participatory installations invite anonymous testimonies of desire, dread, sorrow, hope, and courage from the public, challenging norms of visibility and modes of communion. Before I Die has been created in over 5,000 cities across 75 countries. After the End was a 2021 New York Times Critic’s Pick.
Born in the U.S., I grew up in a culture that champions individual expression while living in a Taiwanese household where Chinese calligraphy was worshipped as both personal and spiritual art. This instilled my reverence for the handwritten word, which I have utilized for most of my installations. As the steward of hundreds of thousands of handwritten reflections on life in the early 21st century, I use these fragments in paintings and videos that explore the nature of language, desire, ritual, and our relation to the past.
Inspirations include the speculative worlds of Philip K. Dick and David Lynch, the humanistic visions of city life by Jane Jacobs and Juhani Pallasmaa, the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Byung-Chul Han, and the laid-back curiosity of Zhuangzi.
