2019

Wood, Paint, Plaster, Wax, Wine, Crayons,Syringes,
Reversed Heartbeat, Prayers, Diary  

Installation and live performance at Kennedy Center, Hamilton College 

Piles of Bodies, Empty Grave is an installation and performance. I read a bedtime prayer and then lie down next to body casts—meanwhile, the background audio shifts from the sounds of a flat line to a beating heart.

In my parents’ recount of their experience in China's 1989 protests, they confused the year 1989 with 1986. Years later, my family turned to Catholicism as a form of healing. This piece ponders the fragility of memories, the struggle to pursue “truth” in historical narratives, and how ideology can be used as a tool for both violence and cure. The performance attempts to serve as a ritual to heal the continuing pain and to “resurrect” the lives lost during the incident.