Thangka

2024

Mixed media installation: oil, acrylic, gold leaf on canvas, satin, eggshells, Dao (Vietnamese sword), metal bowl, wooden box, hair

Questions of identity, consciousness, and othering are constant in my work. The installation is inspired by Tibetan thangka paintings (religious Buddhist scrolls used for personal meditation or instruction). The viewer is confronted by two figures, cultural imagery, hints of mythology and symbols. One figure holds a sword that has been physically sliced straight through the scroll. Back bent, the other figure hovers while in transformation. Both are bound together by hair.

In the foreground sits a stack of objects: a sword, a metal bowl and closed box with long black hair spilling from it. The sword is completely covered in eggshells. Since 2016, I’ve been layering objects in eggshell veneer. My eggshell-based work has arisen from formal experimentation and latent exposure to Son Mai lacquer ware, an often-overlooked traditional craft related to my cultural heritage. I often cover forceful objects, like hammers and boxing gloves, in eggshells to create both aesthetic and conceptual tensions.

The deliberate slowness of this work bears emphasis. It requires time-consuming labor and care. Such slowness has given me the space to meditate on possible connections between identity, alternative ways of being, and non-Western epistemologies. The unhurried demands of my eggshell sculptures offer me a personal way of working through a broader, growing set of concerns about slowness as a decolonial strategy, and a way to resist the ever-quickening time pressures of capitalism. By focusing on slow and careful intentionality, the excessive idealization of speed and efficiency can be decentered and decelerated.

In contrast, the brush strokes and painterly drips suggest something different. Unlike a traditional formal stretched canvas that is installed permanently, the scroll's location is impermanent, meant to be easily rolled up and migrate.  In contrast to traditional Thangkas, this work provides no moral lessons or conclusions. Rather, I hope to provoke the viewer to ask questions that I myself cannot answer: of ways of being and moving.