Emotional Dumplings -2022
Fabric sculptures with crystal beads, chopsticks, and bamboo frame
Dimension 9ft by 2ft in diameter (each)
*Notes The artwork is meant to grow with time. As more workshops are conducted, more dumplings are added to the work. Eventually new bamboo trays will be added, and each chandelier will grow higher and taller.
Artist Statement
Likening the delicate art of stuffing dumplings to the tender and mindful touch required in handling our own emotional baggage, this work is a meditation on emotional self-awareness and an investigation into the feelings triggered by food, eating, and memories. It was originally created as a private way for me to process my own grief, longing, and regrets from being unable to see my own mother and family members for over two years due to the pandemic, and thus unable to fully support each other in mourning the sudden passing of my aunt, who helped raise me in Vietnam and whom I had only visited once over two decades after my immigration to the US.
I later developed the workshops accompanying this work to pay homage to my family tradition of making a copious amount of dumplings together on special occasions. By asking participants to partake in the making of and gifting their emotional dumplings to the art installation, I explore how mindful communal acts of art-making and self-expression in formal public settings can be engines for both personal and social healing. In doing so, I hope to somehow heal my grief forward through art.
