As a Chinese woman living both in China and the US, I am constantly met with three gazes, sometimes a combination of them all: the oriental gaze that seeks to exoticize, where people project and expect something exceptionally “Chinese” about me and my work; the colonial gaze that seeks to hegemonize, where people project their Western context and expectation onto my Asian body; and the patriarchal gaze that seeks to put me in my place as a woman. The more I encounter this paradoxical overlap of gazes, the more intrigued I am by the muddy waters in between. My work is therefore an embodiment of this paradox through a specifically female lens, captured both inside and outside the Western context, and is both responsive to and resistant to the Oriental gaze.

Through painting and drawing, I detangle my thoughts and feelings like combing through knotted hair, using my surface as my brush. I use graphite, charcoal, and oil paints, typical Western artistic mediums, instead of traditional Chinese ink, out of necessity to set distance between my practice and my culture. This distance creates a safe space between the Western audience’s gaze and my culture, but also addresses my own failure to assimilate into my own culture as a non-traditional woman.