A House Is Not A Home
In A House Is Not a Home, I explore the intersections between the dollhouse—a symbol of domestic ideals thought from chilhood—and the female body, particularly my own as a queer woman in a conservative space. Re-examining how the body is often cropped, pressed, and reshaped to fit societal standards of presentation of femininity, sexuality, and power within the home and family. The dollhouse, an archetype of the American dream, is central to this work. Traditionally pristine and pastel, it undergoes a transformation—crumpling and expanding, stripped to a stark white canvas. This allows semi-transparent images of my body to project a narrative that is both two-dimensional and deeply three-dimensional, reflecting my own experiences squeezed between competing dimensions of reality, culture, and self-expression.In revisiting the dollhouse, I confront the gender roles and cultural expectations that shaped my upbringing and tradition, such as the pressure to present as hyper-feminine, marry, and have children. By dissecting these constructs, I aim to outgrow their limitations. The dollhouse, now devoid of its original playful markings and soft hues, stands as a blank slate, awaiting a new occupant who doesn’t fit the mold. Fostering an almost childlike sense of discovery that invites viewers to engage with the work’s spatial and physical boundaries in both its static form, three-dimensional photo frame, and as an artist’s book, where each image can be moved on its hinge to explore new combinations with light, body, and space. A House Is Not a Home reflects on the past, critiques the present, and invites a future where the home—and the self within it—can be redefined on one’s terms.
Second Skin
Second Skin is a life-sized artist book that explores the interplay between language and the body, combining collected text and reconfigured tissue patterns. Designed as a participatory and tactile experience, the piece invites viewers to engage directly with its physicality. To open the book, one must first unbutton the silky pink garment encasing it—a delicate yet striking layer made from the same pattern that forms the book’s thematic content. This “second skin” bears its title hand-pinned above, accompanied by various clothing tags.
The book’s pages, coated in layers of beeswax, evoke the texture and fragility of human skin, their translucence and weight suggesting the materiality of the body. Like a vascular system, the pages flow and interconnect, each turn revealing intricate juxtapositions of tissue patterns and human hair from the artist herself, embedded within the waxy surfaces. Central to each page is a single clothing tag, collected from the artist’s own wardrobe, inscribed with culturally charged descriptors such as Curvy, Boyfriend Fit, Extra Small, Women’s Slim Fit, and Extra Large. These labels, both mundane and deeply symbolic, are positioned as reflections of how society prescribes identity and value through the language of consumer goods.
The artist began this project by paying close attention to clothing labels—objects she had previously regarded with passive familiarity while dressing. These wax-incased tags, she realized, function as microcosms of societal ideologies, subtly encoding messages about gender, size, and identity. As a woman navigating societal norms of gender presentation, she was struck by the contradictions: on one day labeled “Extra Small,” and on another “Extra Large,” as if the body could shift categories with a change of fabric or fit. Terms like Boyfriend Fit invite assumptions about sexuality and gender roles, while men’s clothing, by contrast, more frequently employs literal measurements—objective metrics less fraught with subjective interpretation. Through its visceral and playful construction, Second Skin asks viewers to consider how the language of clothing labels orchestrates perceptions of the body. In these seemingly simple, everyday terms lies a complex and often reductive system that shapes our understanding of identity. By turning each waxen page, the viewer is invited to reflect on the implications of these labels and to question the frameworks they impose upon us. This is a book that not only unfolds in the hand but also challenges the mind, peeling back the layers of cultural inscription on the human form.
Seeing Red and Period…
Swallow Your Words
