Here is my small interpretation of how it feels to be Chinese Indonesian. The backdrop is a list of 16 laws that were enacted that directly or indirectly discriminated against Indonesian residents with Chinese ancestry. There were 45 laws made during Suharto’s regime (1966-1998). About 62 laws total were made…
There are two images here. One is in the background. They are of 5 sisters: my mother and her sisters. Their father wanted boys very badly. He got his wife pregnant five times, all of which resulted in girls. Still he did not give up. He gave them all boys…
This is my grandmother on my mother’s side. She was the bedrock to my mother’s family. She supported a family of 7 as a seamstress and with dividends from her father’s company when her husband who was a writer did not earn enough money. This is the only photo I…
This also focuses on my father’s side of the family. On the right hand is an image of him, his eldest sister, and his aunt (behind his sister). The other two figures were the neighbors. My father’s father went back to China to find a wife and brought her to Indonesia. She…
This is the first piece from my parents’ photo collection that I made. I found this group of forgotten images on my last visit to see my folks. It was all neatly wound in plastic that I don’t think anyone has opened since at least 1983 when we emigrated out of…
It has been so long since I posted here. I had been working on a new series of work, titled Excavation that is exhibited in a show, Liquid Stories, at Lindsay Dirkx Brown Art Gallery at San Ramon Community Center. The curator asked all of us to speak about 5…
For this show, I made 5 dioramas at the last minute, although the ideas have been percolating for a while. I wanted to make happy dioramas, not dioramas that have a tinge of sadness (although I admit those are my favorites for the drama factor).
These are the dioramas I’ve made this past year. Five were made in the late winter/early spring 2015 and 15 more were made in the fall (Sept-Oct) 2015.
I’m not sure why I’m posting it here. I think the two people that will come across this already know. But I feel it is important for my own documentation purposes. Here is the show in which my work will be exhibited. I will have two different installations: one large and…
