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To have started out life in a place that was turning from Sai Gon to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, a place that was shaken by unfathomable cataclysms, changing, making up its mind, a 4th generation Chinese-Vietnamese baby girl, in the year of the fire snake, where can you go from there?
You flee, you migrate, you wander. Perhaps to the sea, to an island in Malaysia your parents calls Boula-bidong, and you have to trust that you were there at age two, because you can't find it on a map; perhaps you remember going to school in the Netherlands, where you ate wheat bread with chocolate sprinkles and kaas during recess; recall those long distances by car across the US, unbearably hot by day, dangerously slippery by night, the millions of lights in New York City, the arcades in blonde, dusty Kansas, mountainous Colorado, where you were impressed by your aunt's two Chihuahuas and Saint Bernard and corn dogs, and sunny Oakland, California, which has become very familiar.
And where do you go in your mind? You go through alienation and assimilation on your way to political and spiritual consciousness, perhaps you do the run because you're the first in your family who's going to college, mark the milestones on your way towards the American dream everyone talks about, keep wandering and searching, sometimes electing security and predictability before you risk questioning. Perhaps you walk backwards a lot, getting intimate with your shadow to understand what stuff you're made of, before you turn around and look at the sun.
These are all possibilities. But the details aren't as important as the growth and dynamic change.
What is certain is that I create. I hope not only to be a better artist, but a truer artist. What I have lived through informs my art, but my art practice also directs the way I live. Art is the beautiful, outrageously fun vehicle no automobile company could ever have dreamt up for living an extraordinary life. I will continue to wander this world and beyond.
When I am not wandering the globe taking note of the beauty of the world, I am very happy to do so at home, in Oakland, California, which is aswarm with wonderfully vibrant, active, and diverse communities of artists, writers, performers, activists, progressive thinkers, spiritual practitioners, healers, and promoters, and others.
