2012 – 2013

After Generalizasian, the initial stage of anger and outrage at the world and myself, I submitted to grief and depression. White people were telling me how to feel and it didn’t matter whether they were right or not. I was done with white people having control, but I wasn’t yet able to gauge how to control myself. There were a lot of emotions stirring, but how to organize, prioritize, and ultimately sort them out? What is it to be privileged? What is it to be Han Chinese, the white people of the largest continent in the world, but also to be Americanized and living in America as a person of color?

Frustrasian was more therapeutic than anything else. I continued using noodles and body parts as graphical elements. However, these body parts were meant to represent the naivety of young girls – the naivety being something to envy, to miss. Other graphical elements I added to the mix were the void and satisfaction of space, pattern, and abstraction.

On the technical side, I wanted to explore flatness and depth. I didn’t push it too much, but I enjoyed making my pieces look a little bit like collages or puzzle pieces that haven’t quite found their place.

After Frustrasian came God Girl. And in between Generalizasian and Frustrasian, you can kind of see bits of Nubbins appearing.