I am a visual artist, currently living in beautiful Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. I have always worked with many different mediums, but right now my passion is — mask making, portraiture and performance. I grew up on a farm in Alberta and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (U of Lethbridge) over twenty years ago.
When I came out of University, I did not know how to make a career as an artist, how to get grant funding or to be exhibited. I was not sure how to afford to keep making art, while paying rent, especially as someone, who was not making commercial art. It took a lot of time to come back around to make art my full time affair. Even today, there is no guarantee that my projects will get funded. However, I have had an immense amount of support all along from my family. For the past 5 years here in Canada, I have received numerous federal and provincial grants and paid exhibits so I have been lucky to be able to keep going. That has generated a lot of momentum and now opportunities are flowing because of the body of work I have been able to create.
Masks are such a powerful medium to work with, since they carry so much meaning regarding identity, persona, self-image and archetypes, as well as disguise, transformation and protection. They contrast our inner vs outer world, what we hide and what we reveal and, at the same time, multiplicity and fragmentation of self. My masks are three dimensional portraits of myself that are sculptural and wearable. Because they are physical representations made from paper, I can also distort and alter my face, allowing me to change the way I look. This can be very playful (adding in extra facial features) or it can be very disturbing (cutting up my face and reconstructing it by weaving the pieces together), or it can be an investigation into my identity and how I have been perceived throughout my life as mixed-race (if I slant my eyes more, do I look more Asian?). All of this leads to manipulating how I am ‘seen’ and asking the viewer, if they see me differently, when I present one way or another, even though my whole mask collection stems from the same originating point of my face. I hope that, even though, I am concealed behind a mask, that people are seeing a glimpse of ‘me’ through all the variations and as a whole body of work. I hope that they also see themselves in my work and can relate to it, and look towards authenticity. I love how open-ended my work can be. Many people see different things in my work, depending on their own perspective.
I have always been so fascinated by masks and I realized how people are innately drawn to faces. From the minute we are born, we look for faces in everything as a way to connect.
The first mask I made was a Self-Portrait and, from there, I made masks of friends and family. Working with my own face started making the most sense to use, since it was always available to me, and I did not need to constantly ask for permission to use other people’s images for exhibiting and photographing.
Plus, there is something interesting about Self-Portraits, as they offer the most interesting perspective about people and how they change over time, not only as a person growing older but also in how we see ourselves. As I started envisioning a body of work, I realized that by using my face as the constant, I could make so many different variations from there, and I really start digging deeper into exploring my personal identity.
My face has been a source of questioning by strangers on a daily basis: “Where are you from? What are you?”. People tried to categorize me (not quite Asian, not quite White). So my explorations originally stemmed from these repeated encounters that lasted over decades. Then, it just kept growing from there and has become a collection of over 150 self-portrait masks and countless portraits and videos.
I think, because of society we often have a skewed perception about ourselves, which can affect our personal emotions. As one example, our whole lives we are shown certain beauty standards, most of which are unattainable and unrealistic, and we are taught that our value lies in a way how we look. This goes on to negatively affect our self-image, self-esteem, and perhaps we feel the need to hide our ‘flaws’, as deemed by society. This can be said for so many things, including our identity beyond the skin level.
Does the society we live in make it a safe place to be ourselves or do we feel like we need to hide who we truly are? My hope is that through more diversity and representation reflected in media, people will see the beauty of many skin tones, of many shapes and forms, and abilities, and ways of being that are natural and beautiful and make the world a more interesting place to co-exist.
My hope is that people find strength in their inner selves and discover who they are, on their own terms, and that individuals, communities and society will support that.
I have met a lot of artists and mask makers online and I love connecting with people. This was especially important during the pandemic when we could not have travelled but I was meeting people from all over the world. I am happy to offer any advice and share my work. In return, I am inspired by all the art I see people do. It is also very gratifying, when people have reached out to me, saying I have inspired them to start making art, or to try mask making, etc.
I get approached for collaborations all the time but it is only recently I have worked together with other artists and I am extremely selective about who I work with. Most of the time, people just want me to send them my masks for their photoshoots but I am more interested in working with artists directly, where together we take my masks to another level with movement or interesting ideas, in which case it expands and lifts both our respective practises in various ways.
Yes, I am currently getting ready for 2 upcoming group exhibitions, opening in August (Bonavista Biennale, Trinity, Newfoundland) and in September (Esker Foundation, Calgary, Alberta).
I am also currently finishing up a grant project from the Canada Council for the Arts making new masks and portraiture. In the fall, it will be time to apply for more funding for personal projects and also a collaboration project.
I recently worked with a dance artist, Shion Skye Carter (Vancouver, BC) and we created a 20 minute live performance for the CanAsian Dance Festival, which was presented in Montreal and Toronto this past Spring. We have plans to work together again to create a full length dance piece that we hope to show in 2025, so it is a matter of applying for funding again to bridge the distance gap between us while we create this work in-person.
I also hope to collaborate with Butoh dancer Emiko Agatsuma (Tokyo, Japan) and musician Hitoshi Sugiyama (Edmonton, AB). We are waiting to hear back about funding for that project, so I can bring them to Halifax to work together on another performance piece with my masks.
The future is very exciting! There are still so many new masks to make and the work just keeps growing in many different directions. I can’t wait to see what comes next!
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