○ 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 — a refuge for the diasporic body, who so often lives somewhere in translation. 





Skin


digital photograph, 2023


In Time, i


35mm film photographs (diptych)
, 2024




In Time, ii


35mm film photographs (diptych)
, 2024





The Travelers


digital photograph, 2023



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. 


‘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.’



CREATIVE DIRECTED AND MODELED BY LUCY MU LI
PHOTOGRAPHED BY XIAOCHEN ZOU
ASSISTED BY HOLLIE RUTH 

120mm film photographs, 2024







○ 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