I remember working in a small compact room with a few white dishes to squeeze ink into and a table covered in a huge piece of cloth stained with dried colored paint. The smell of construction outside. Dust wafting through the air and smoke squeezing between the gaps of the window, with hands stained with ink, I gave myself up to my instincts and let it carry the brush across the page. Watching as the ink glided across the page, splattering, bleeding, and eating into the fibers of the paper, I was fascinated by the weird shapes that surfaced on the canvas. This often would lead to an earful from my teacher every time, a scolding here, a slap to the wrist there, even times where I was told to never come back to class, yet, this was where I would choose to spend most of my Saturday evenings for six years of my life. 

I continued my artistic journey by exploring mediums such as traditional Chinese painting, photography, digital media, pencil drawing, oil painting, and clay sculpting. All of this was done sheerly out of curiosity, and throughout each medium, I was often asked, “What does this piece mean?” 

“What does it mean?”

“Yeah like what are you trying to convey through this piece?”

And I look down at my lap as this nonsensical creation takes no shape or thought in my mind. 

“Does it need to mean something to you?” I remember looking up to my third grade art teacher, and only to receive an annoyed frown. 

Sometimes I would answer with some baloney off the top of my head, sometimes I would just say I didn’t know, because I really didn’t. I would also begin to question whether what I was doing was the right thing to do. So I continue to carry art, I say carry like its a heavy backpack, but it is clear that art itself is as much as a burden as it is a blessing, a friend, a foe, a stupid joke and a stake in my heart. It contradicts itself every step of the way, and I can’t help but become angry, like a frustrated little boy who doesn’t understand how things work. 

Nothing made sense. 

So I began to ask questions. Carrying that same curiosity that started me on this journey, I asked questions about why things are the way they are, the reality and nature of the world around me. Why do the lofty buildings that grant people the opportunity to reach the sky just feel like another cage that we built to box ourselves in? Can life still be meaningful if we weren’t guaranteed death? Why do I have this inclination for art even though I don’t have anything specific I want to say? 

Though I still don’t completely hold the answer to these questions, if there is something I have learnt during this journey is that life never seems to work the way people want it to, no one can tell what is going to happen tomorrow, no matter how much information we know, constantly contradicting itself. 

In my current and future works, I want to showcase the world's contradictory nature and continue asking questions about things that people give meaning to and continue the possibilities and dichotomy of the world through art.