○ PAINTINGS
The following selection of paintings are from the series ‘Stone to Sand’ and ‘She Went for a Swim’, made between 2020-2024.
Stone to Sand, ii
flashe acrylic on canvas
12 x 12 in
2022
Liminal Travelers, i / Liminal Travelers, ii
flashe acrylic and natural watercolor on canvas
12 x 15 in
2024
Heart Open to the Sky
flashe acrylic, ink, and watercolor on canvas
24 x 32 in
2024
The Skin of the Sea Under Silver Skies
flashe acrylic and natural watercolor on canvas
48 x 60 in
2024
Stone to Sand, v
flashe acrylic on canvas
12 x 12 in
2022
Love is an Ever Expanding Universe
flashe acrylic on canvas
30 x 30 in
2023
Light Will Shine in the Darkest Hour
flashe acrylic on canvas
60 x 80 in (diptych)
2023
If Time Could Speak
flashe acrylic on linen
32 x 32 in
2021
A Portal to Eternity
colored pencil on paper
22 x 28 in
2020
○ WHERE LAND MEETS SEA
Encompassing four years of devoted documentation of the California shoreline, ‘Where Land Meets Sea’ is a photographic series chronicling my journey of meeting kin — for to know a place is to greet and recognize the many shapes and faces that live there.
This project emerged from the shoreline of North County San Diego, my hometown, but has grown with time to reach as far south as Sunset Cliffs in San Diego, and as far north as Navarro Beach in Albion. It began as a way to document my ecological homecoming as I reencountered the lands and waters of my hometown, a place that often felt alien, in my adulthood.
With time, ‘Where Land Meets Sea’ began to consider the shoreline as a space of continuity: a liminal realm of constant exchange, where shared languages emerge amongst kin.
Skin
Skin
digital photograph, 2023
In Time, i
35mm film photographs (diptych)
, 2024
In Time, ii
35mm film photographs (diptych)
, 2024
The Travelers
The Travelers
digital photograph, 2023
In Unison
In Unison
digital photographs (diptych), 2022
○ I AM A TRAVELER
Weaving together performance, poetry, and photography, ‘I am a Traveler’ is the retelling of my diasporic origin story: the ongoing creation of a self-mythology to make sense of my life post-rupture. Uprooted from the Earth and born in flight, I learned to find my way through the dark and follow the fractalizing paths back to the core.
CREATIVE DIRECTED AND MODELED BY LUCY MU LI
PHOTOGRAPHED BY XIAOCHEN ZOU
ASSISTED BY HOLLIE RUTH
120mm film photographs, 2024
‘I am a traveler. I arrived here from beyond the horizon. My ancestors foresaw my birth across the sea, and although they knew it would not be easy, they knew one day I would find my way back through the webs and veins that hold all memory of life on Earth.
And so to return home, I became a traveler.
In the process of rooting I have traveled far and deep, dug my roots towards Earth’s core and followed rivers back to the sea. I translate between realms of Self and Earth, Here and There, Living and Dead — moving through the marrow, the subterranean sea.
I am a child of this Earth, and I have much to learn. I learn to read her rhythms, and in turn, she teaches me of mine. The first principle of this work, she tells me, is devotion. Only by returning again and again do we learn to love deeply, do the currents become known to us.
So for the last few years, I have lived here, deep in the world of where land meets sea. I have sat at the shoreline where stones gather in thousands, singing songs with the churning winter tides. In the spring I say goodbye, and come summer they have all gone to the deep. Year after year, we sing a similar song. I resonate with stone, for they are the travelers from the beginning of time. And with time, I learn all the many faces of my kin — I have made myself a family, one of sand and stone, wind and water.
A home for a traveler is carved, not given. But my ancestors followed me across the ocean, and they have taught me how to see. Their vision is my inheritance, carved into my bones like water in stone. They teach me that here and there and everywhere, there are portals I can follow to remember myself whole again. Earth, you see, is a fractal. Every path leads to the molten core.
There is only to listen, for no one is lost on the spiral path.’
*This is an excerpt from my emerging mythology I am a Traveler (still in progress).
○ FIELD NOTES IN THE VORTEX
‘Field Notes in the Vortex’ emerged from the wide open terrain of the High Desert of Southern California. The project spans writing, photography, performance, and artifact collecting as a means of documenting the evolution of my relationship to the land and my process of meeting kin. These field notes are insights into the metaphysical, as the body surrenders and portals open as time and space shift and bend; stories about intimate encounters with fellow desert beings and bodies; and learnings I've cultivated as a child of diaspora about the rituals and processes that allow us to root and find belonging, wherever we are.
The High Desert is a region in the western part of the Mojave Desert and is the ancestral lands of the Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, Mojave, and Serrano indigenous tribes. (This may be an incomplete list, as the High Desert is a vernacular region with non-discrete boundaries.)
The following images are a zine prototype for an artist book I will be producing as an artist-in-residence with High Desert Test Sites at A-Z West in Joshua Tree, California, as well as Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA in winter and spring 2025.
Ink and thread on printer paper, 8.5 x 11 in (open), 2024
cover
pages 6-7
pages 10-11