The repetitious act of sewing words or small stitches in my art is meditative and prayerful. The laborious stitching invokes the traditional schooling of girls that cultivated piousness, modesty, and tolerance. The ability to carry out repetitive tasks was seen as a labor of love and a sign of religiosity. My art honors the extreme patience required to make it, and at the same time, the painstaking construction of humble and fragile materials seems oppressive and absurd.
In making Doll Series, I sewed a series of small figures that are inversions of idealized female dolls. They reflect what it means to minimize one's sense of self in order to accommodate and please. Their forms correspond to the physical, spiritual, and psychological experience of feeling stripped of power. The figures appear dainty and vulnerable, yet frightening and confrontational. The sculptures are made from disposable materials that are distinctly contemporary, yet they recall ancient ritualistic artifacts. The stained tissues, dried flowers, and latex also allude to clichés of femininity and sexuality.
The scrolls are made from small patches of stained tissues sewn into grids with tiny words embriodered into each patch. The stiching gave me solice during the greiving proocess - a meditation creating order out of emotional chaos. The torn patches sewn together suggest wounds and imperfect healing. The viewer is drawn into the work, and yet it seems to cause anxiety: it is aesthetically pleasing and ugly at once.