Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do.
I create work inspired by artworks, objects, sites, and materials, often in museums and other public spaces where visual art is found. I have been grateful to have had opportunities for sustained study through residencies at the Smart Museum (2020-21), High Concept Labs (2020-23), 21c Museum Hotel Chicago (2022-23), Heritage Museum of Asian Art (2024), Hyde Park Art Center (2025), and Chinese Fine Arts Society (2026). I am currently working on Shared Earth Flowing Water, a series of performances dedicated to peace, community, and the natural world.
When and how did you decide you wanted to use movement to express your ideas?
It was not a decision; I can’t remember a time in my life I did not want to dance.
Is there a moment you look back on as being formative to your identity as an artist?
One is the moment I first realized I wanted to create work in museum settings, which began my independent practice. It happened by accident. In 2016, I gave an improvised performance installation with a score (“Enter and leave as you wish. Recording is allowed. Feel free to participate”); however, viewers encountering it sat, watched, and did not participate beyond taking photos and videos. The next day, I saw the Monster Roster, an exhibition of monstrous and melancholy figures by Chicago artists at the Smart Museum. I was entranced by the artworks, especially the paintings by Leon Golub. Not only did they offer thematic epiphany on the content of my performance, I realized the kind of viewership that interested me was present in the gallery: viewers had autonomy over the distance, duration, and depth of their engagement—and alter the conditions of the place by their choices. Excited by the conversation I saw between the artworks, the space, and the movements I was exploring, I proposed developing the performance within the exhibition. The result ignited my curiosity for intentional engagement with visual art, museums, sites, artists, and the people (visitors, guards, preparators, educators, artists, curators) found in these spaces.
Who are the artists/creatives/musicians that you have been inspired by lately?
Chicago has an amazing puppetry scene – some of the many brilliant puppeteers that inspire me include Tom Lee, Jaerin Son, Myra Su, Yiwen Wu, Caitlin McLeod, Zach Sun, Sam Lewis, and Grace Needlman.
Are there any influences that are core to your work?
As my work is responsive, everything is an influence! I am especially inspired by objects, artworks, materials, and spaces (which includes weather, architectural structures, passersby) – I try to listen to it all.
As much of my work is also collaborative, I am also inspired by my collaborators and grateful for the work we create together.
What makes a good collaborator in your experience?
We are making the work we can only make together. We listen, we share freely, we communicate, we are open to the process, and we take responsibility for our work.
Tell us about your performance series, Guardians of the Earth and Sky. How has the project evolved over the years?
Guardians of the Earth and Sky is an all-ages dance, music, artmaking, storytelling adventure that travels through several Chicago parks. I began this work in 2024, since I was creating work inspired by dragons for the Year of the Dragon, including my year-long performance installation If The Sky Could Dream at the Heritage Museum of Asian Art. During my research, I came across mention of the celestial guardians of the Chinese constellations in the Huainanzi 淮南子, a Chinese text from the 2nd century BCE. Drawing from the Tao Te Ching, it describes a universe divided into five directions, each associated with a color, a guardian, a season, and an element. The guardians are 青龍 Azure Dragon of the East (wood), 朱雀 Red Bird of the South (fire), 白虎 White Tiger of the West (metal), 玄武 Black Tortoise of the North (water), and 黃龍 Yellow Dragon of the Center (earth).
Every performance is created in collaboration with tai chi master Peter Wong, dancers Amanda Maraist and Darling “Shear” Squire, musicians Paige Brown and Hunter Diamond, and storyteller Penny Li, and each is unique to the landscape and architecture of each park and connects ancient Chinese mythology with the history and culture of Chicago parks and neighborhoods.
Because this work is site-specific and takes place in the living spaces of public parks, the performance is always in the process of evolving and becoming in response to the weather, the landscape, and of course to the people who are present with us!
In our second year, we added a new segment on Asian American history to the script, and Penny Li, our storyteller, translated the work into Mandarin for our first bilingual performance at Ping Tom Park in Chinatown. We also had our first ASL-interpreted show (interpreted by Rivka Hozinsky, who first came to our performance as an audience member).
This year, we will offer a bilingual show at Ping Tom again, and we are offering ASL interpretation at all the shows. We are beginning the show with a new art activity – the past two years participants have made Guardians-inspired headpieces designed by visual artist Young Kim. This year, we’ll be making fans designed by visual artist Titus Lau. And we are working on an expanded participatory finale in partnership with Dear Asian Youth.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? (Personally, I will always rave about The Allure of Matter, no matter how long it’s been…)
The Allure of Matter definitely was a standout exhibition and one that will haunt me because of the unfinished work (as you know, when we met, I was working on an evening-length live performance that would travel through the exhibition at Wrightwood 659 that never happened because the exhibition unexpectedly closed for the pandemic… I made three digital works instead, inspired by Liu Jianhua’s Black Flame, Liu Wei’s Merely a Mistake II No. 7, and Yin Xiuzhen’s Transformation). It is difficult to recapture the wonder I felt standing near or within these monumental objects made from everyday materials – even to see them built (in the case of Zhu Jinxi’s Wave of the Materials, which I was able to watch being installed over 10 days by a team of over 10 people). I have not yet had the opportunity to work so closely with an exhibition like that again, or to spend such a sustained length of time immersed in studying artworks since.
Some other artworks I saw and loved recently: prints by Hamanishi Katsunori, paper cutouts by Matisse, and the Korean National Treasures exhibition at the Art Institute, Fritz Winter’s paintings Am Weir, Haegue Yang’s Mountains of Encounter, Dominic Kießling’s Blob/Cloud (which I danced with at the Chicago Architecture Biennial), Wendy Red Star’s self portraits and Marie Watt’s jingle clouds Thirteen Moons at Museum Ludwig, Antony Gormley’s Infinite Cube (which I danced with in collaboration with Janice Misurell-Mitchell and Dee Alexander, you can watch here) and Zhan Wang’s Ornamental Rock at the Smart. And I have a tremendous sense of love and longing for the Camille Claudel exhibition a few years ago at the Art Institute – which I wrote about here.
Can you share a reaction to your work that has lingered with you?
Sometimes I have had the honor of someone spontaneously creating art in response to mine – this TikTok video by Christina Demos, which she made at one of my performances of Blue Alice, is one, these paintings by Arthur Wright in response to my dances with Kießling’s Blob are another – there is something really magical when we are inspired by and inspiring each other — it fills me with gratitude.
What are some recent, current, or upcoming projects that you are excited about?
Last year I collaborated with over 50 artists to create Mond(e): 月亮代表我的心, a performance installation inspired by the moon, with a new collaborative performance each month (most in my studio at Hyde Park Art Center). This year I am working on Shared Earth Flowing Water, a performance series dedicated to peace, community, and the natural world. We had our first performance in May, a new work called Seed that combined music and dance with native prairie planting in partnership with the Park District, the Field Museum, Chinese American Museum of Chicago, and Chinese Fine Arts Society. In these projects, it has been amazing to witness people gathering and sharing in community, and to experience the many ways we can meditate upon a theme.
I also recently had the opportunity to dance with Indigenous artist Marie Watt’s Thirteen Moons in the exhibition HERE AND NOW. De/Collecting Memories from Turtle Island at Museum Ludwig. I first learned about Watt’s work in the Storywork exhibition at Krannert Art Museum, where I created a performance installation with projections by Urbana artist Matt Harsh – and first danced with Watt’s Sky Dances Light here in Chicago at Kavi Gupta Gallery. Seeing Watt’s work in a different context – as part of a photography exhibition featuring pristine, hypersaturated images of an unpopulated North American landscape, in a museum known for its collection of Pop Art – gave me new insight into the work and even more appreciation for the ethereal and animalistic forms of the jingle clouds, which come to life with movement, and the opportunities for dialogue that demonstrated that the past is the present is the future.
What do you collect?
Words, images.
Interviewed by Seth Nguyen. Artist portrait by Diego Campos during a performance of Mond(e): 月亮代表我的心 – Mirror of the Sun with sculpture by Zach Sun.