Here, my love

Wooden box (4.1 x 4.1 x 2.3 inch), Japanese rice paper, Chinese ink, lipstick, performance video (10:39 mins)
2021

Performance still

Final box with QR code inside
This is a personal piece meditating on the expression of love, especially in verbal form. In East Asian culture that I grew up in, verbal, explicit expression of love is rare. Recently in my life, I realize how I’m utterly unable to express love verbally and how that has given rise to regret upon realizing the opportunities are already gone.

In this piece, I wrestled with my desire to express and my inability to do so, by performing two attempts that eventually result in a physical object. In the first attempt, I tried to express my love by talking to the box, which is similar to how people confide their secrets to a tree hole. The performance was recorded, but I removed the audio. At the end of my talking, I kissed the box leaving a lipstick mark at the opening.

In the second attempt, I tried to write it down. But what I wrote down is abstract marks that resemble Chinese calligraphy but actually are not real characters. I then put the QR code to the video of the recorded performance inside the box.

A few questions were in my mind when creating this piece: how love can be expressed by way of language, objects and non-verbal behaviors; how the differences can be communicated across cultures; whether it’s still meaningful to express even if the people who the expression was intended for won’t perceive it; if so, what it means.

It was exhibited at SVA Flatiron Gallery in New York as part of the Contemporary Practices art residency program in 2021.