I started my life as someone who was lost, given to a world that could have been so cruel to someone so fragile. The One Child Policy directly affected how I entered this world and now I want to leave a reminder of this journey for others to witness and be forced to directly interact with. I was found on the stairs of a city hall building in Anhui Province. I was lucky enough to not only be taken away from that place, but to be brought to an orphanage where I was adopted into a family that so desperately wanted to show love to a child. I am creating this series of work for the babies who did not, but also for the women who are now left behind, a tangible reminder of those 35 years and the aftermath of those events.
As one of the women left behind by this policy, it has created a constant struggle within myself to negotiate how much I want to dive into a culture that I was born into, but not raised in, as I never want to overwrite all that I was given growing up in Massachusetts. No one can have their entire life written across the surface of their skin as life is always in flux. It is only by looking below the surface that someone can just graze the surface of what makes up someone’s experience in this world.
Carving into both clay and paper directly affects the structural integrity of the pieces thus emphasizing how fragile they can be similar to how I was once. This fragility works to create a sense of innocence within my work as I want to highlight the delicate nature of how my life began and how drastically it can be molded. It is through multiple prints and slip cast molds that I can allow myself to push these limits as it lets me explore different options and avenues similar to life.
