Artist Statement

The cumulative effect of people on their environment motivates me to record an extended portrait of society in a simple and quiet manner. Recording barges of coal on the Yangtze River, boiling mud pots in northern Iceland, water management sites in central Taiwan, archeological digs in Trujillo, Peru, highway construction in Boston, golden beaches in the Lofoten Islands within the Arctic Circle of Norway allows me to rethink nature as a context. The Three Gorges Dam Project in China, which I visited in September of 2006, asserts changes in the modern landscape on a phenomenal scale. While these developments are orderly and labor-intensive they also have an unmistakable scope, hubris, and grandeur. Values unconsciously revealed in our physical surroundings are cultural truths. It is material evidence of who we are. It is our Industrial Heritage.

Bio

As a child, I often played in the black sand pile at the construction site that was at the entrance of our cul-de-sac. I hung out with the neighborhood kids, picked mulberry leaves for my pet silkworms, and learned how to ride my little red bike on that street. Nowadays, when my cousin picks me up from the airport at 6:15am, I breathe in the humid air, think of my Dad’s voice, look out the window as people start for work on their scooters. We head straight to my favorite beef noodle joint in my hometown of Chungli. It’s a ritual. The place is open 24/7, and it’s what I’ve been craving since my last visit to Taiwan.

I emigrated with my Mom and sister from Taiwan to Buffalo, NY, where I attended first and second grade at the same time, then moved to Queens, New York. In Queens, we moved almost every year, which I blame for my tendency to want to travel constantly, to pack up and go. I learned to be international between Corona and Elmhurst. I’m a Queens’ girl who’s been to Iceland, Peru and Cambodia to photograph landscapes; the manmade and natural world. Photographs bridge local and global experience, the gulfs between present and past, self and world. Places themselves contain a complexity that bears the marks of history and psychology in building, sky, construction and their interrelationships. I record themes of urban sprawl, sites of industrial activity, architectural infrastructures, and waterways, trying to visit and absorb as many places as possible. Combinations of conceptual order and practical chaos are present as I observe from a space located outside the area of activity. It is the intersection of human, climatic, and geographic realms that are contemplated in my photography.

Curriculum Vitae

Born 1978, in Chungli, Taiwan, ROC
Based in Pond Eddy and New York City

Education:
BFA The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York, NY, 2000

Recent Exhibitions:
Solo
2003 Grey Water- Water and its Management- art photographs on the interplay of manmade and natural elements. Next Gallery, Metropolitan College of New York, New York, NY
2002 Northern Grey- recent works from Iceland, NJ, Peru, Scotland and Taiwan.
Print Space Gallery, New York, NY
Group
2006-2008 Landmarks of New York, to travel to 40 countries including Tokyo, Japan,Frankfurt, Germany, Taipei, Taiwan, Beirut, Lebanon, Brussels, Belgium, and Mexico City, Mexico
2007 Inside Out, Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Florida
2006-2007 Turtle Salon, Chelsea Space, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, UK, nüans, Dusseldorf, Germany
2005 Landmarks of New York, The Municipal Art Society Urban Center Gallery, New York, NY
2003 Archi-Texture, presented by Nurture Art, Brooklyn Fireproof Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2003 New Visions/New Voices, organized by City Without Walls, Seton Hall Univeristy school of Law, Newark, NJ
2003 Photography Exhibition 2003, Greene County Council on the Arts Catskill Gallery, Catskill, NY
2003 Shaping Wholeness: Asian American Artists Create, presented by Elmhurst Hospital Center and the Asian American Arts Centre, Elmhurst Hospital Center, Main Lobby, Queens, NY
2003 World Water Day, water town meeting, presented by Water Water, Hewitt Building, the Cooper Union,
New York, NY
2003 Benefit Show for Momenta Art, Brooklyn, NY and exhibited at White Columns, New York, NY
2001 Group Show benefiting Positive Focus, Print Space Gallery, New York, NY
2000 Senior Photography Exhibition, The Cooper Union, New York, NY
1999 Menschel Fellowship Exhibition "Off Land", The Cooper Union, New York, NY
1996-2000 Annual End of the Year Show, The Cooper Union, New York, NY

Awards, Residency, Fellowships and Publications:
2007 (May) Atlantic Center for the Arts with master artist Thomas Struth, New Smyrna Beach, Florida
2005 Photography of designated Landmarks, Landmarks of New York IV, ed. Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, Monacelli Press
2003 International Young Art 2004 semi-finalist
2002 Finalist for the Center for Photography at Woodstock's Photography Now 2002, judged by Kathy Ryan, photography editor of the New York Times Magazine
2002 Digital imaging for "The Timeline of Art History", the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
2001 Digital imaging for "Heading West" and "Touring West" exhibition catalogue,
The New York Public Library, New York, NY
1999 Menschel Fellowship for Creative Inquiry, The Cooper Union, New York, NY
1998-99 Hearst Foundation Scholarship, The Cooper Union, New York, NY

Employment:
2000-present Assistant Photographer, Photograph Studio, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, NY