Family Tree

(2023)

A celebration of chosen family, Family Tree is the culmination of a multimedia project I created over the summer of 2023. I traveled around the country in pilgrimages to my loved ones, taking their photographs, painting their portraits, writing a series of short vignettes capturing my relationship to each person, and creating a 52-minute film. My solo exhibition, held at Stanford University’s Mohr Gallery in March 2024, featured the twelve paintings (created with oil paint and gold leaf on 6-inch diameter wood panels), alongside accompanying texts and inkjet prints.

With this body of work, I explore the importance of family constructed by acts of free will rather than accidents of blood, investigate how relationships with others can constitute the self, and pay homage to those who taught me unconditional love. Emerging from my own familial trauma, I aim to rethink the family beyond the nuclear mold, embracing new modes of social relations that transcend repressive traditional structures. I build my own concept of home – one not centralized in a physical location, but instead contained within a dispersed network of relationships that endure beyond spatial proximity. In other words, I locate home in other people.