Untitled (wood), 2025, pine wood, 3/8” x 1.5” x variable
Conducting an ‘image survey’ within my archive, I grabbed pixelated screenshots of my red bedding (R), a green caretakers’shirt (G), my blue crib (B), and other baby’s faces, relying on video (RGB) to substitute memories inaccessible to me. I soaked these images in acetone, a solvent that lifts toner ink and echoes my complex feelings on Asian-ness and femininity. Through soaking and scraping ink off image, I remember experiences, leaving behind a distorted image and liquid memory. By soaking wood in liquid memory, I embark on a speculative process of repatriation or re-membering: returning memory to wood. Enabled by globalization, both wood and I are ‘exported:’ China is the largest wood product exporter in the world, and Yunnan Province is one of the top timber-producing provinces within the country. Between 1999-2023 U.S. families adopted around 80,000 children from China, accounting for almost 30% of all U.S. intercountry adoptions.