2008, Acrylic on canvas, 40"w x 52"h
I grew up in Taipei, Taiwan, a culturally diverse city that mixes together Taiwanese, Japanese and American cultures, and I moved to the Untied States years ago. This mixed cultural environment inspired me to blend the cosmopolitan experience into my paintings. I abstract images to describe a dual identity formation and to draw out the evolution of breaking and reforming a hybrid existence in between cultures. Using assimilations of my transnational life to bring forth a symbiotic mixed identity is what I intend to do. I endeavor to create a fresh version of cultural hybridity.
My paintings combine the design of traditional Taiwanese temples and arts with American and Japanese popular culture, namely manga/comic and anime/cartoon; moreover, Mother Nature helps me in inventing my own painting style. The cartoon-like flat painterly expressions reflect how I innocently observe things around me while I am very aware of the sometimes cruel realities, such as experiences of dictatorship in my early childhood and racism in young adulthood.
Rather than painting stereotypes such as dragons and a dry cleaning store representing Asia, or Coke and Ford representing America, I look for inspirations in everyday life, opening my mind to experience what is really going on around me. Through the journeying experiences, I realized that daily life offers the most resourceful inspirations. I prefer to depict the harmonious side of Asians in the United States for we thrive in a foreign land with a positive attitude, and, consequently, I apply an infinite optimistic mind to life and work.
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