Are You Listening? Do You See Me?

You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor.
A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways.
But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions,
the tree and you still share a quarter of your genes.
– Richard Powers, The Overstory

Trees respond to light—their very existence depends on photosynthesis. Research now finds that trees detect and emit vibrations, scents, sounds, and signals to communicate with each other through their leaves and root systems. Trees warn each other, care for kin, form alliances with and provide nutrients to other trees, and join underground symbiotic networks (the “wood-wide-web”), mimicking human neural and social networks.

Are You Listening? Do You See Me? responds to these findings. We see the tree above ground—surface roots, trunk, branches, leaves—while their root webs and chemical responses are silent and invisible.

Twisting and reaching, roots and branches mimic our reaching out for another person. The tree responds with chemicals and electrical impulses to damage to a limb or its hidden root network, as do human bodies in response to injury. The mature tree transfers its wisdom and protects the young; its loss is felt by the forest. The solitary tree is left weak, without a network. Does it yearn to be a part of a social network as do we?

Trees and humans are more alike than different. Like the tree that suffers when the invisible network and community bonds are broken, people too are often not heard, not seen, invisible—their human networks absent.

Origin Stories

My parents, older sister and I immigrated to the US when I was very young. Growing up far away from any extended family, I missed what I imagined to be the grounding force of aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents around me. My parents rarely spoke of their lives in Belgium in the 1940s – 1960s.

Recently, I showed my mother this photo from her childhood, and asked her, “What do you see?” She began to tell me an intergenerational story of feuds over money, alcoholism, infidelity, child abandonment, jealousy, and domestic abuse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This collage series is my interpretation of fragments of family history, as experienced by girls and women.

Color at the End of the Tunnel

For decades, Boston’s public transit stations have been a hive of activity with more than a million daily trips. The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic brought all of this to a sudden halt. Ridership declined by 90% virtually overnight. Daily life had been transformed, and even the simple act of taking public transit carried a heavy sadness and sense of hopelessness.

When I photographed in and around the Maverick Square T-Station in East Boston, we were reaching a turning point with the pandemic. Administration of vaccines began rolling out. A sense of hope, a glimmer of color at the end of the tunnel, appeared. Hope was slowly being restored.

This photographic series focuses on the gradual transition through the spring months of 2021. I was particularly interested in the parallel timeline of the change of season and the change in people’s disposition as we were slowly returning to a sense of normalcy.

Syllabary for a Natural World

The natural world has provided me with a particular way of seeing. My work combines nature, science, photography and digital processes to create a language that is uniquely my own, where the interaction of plants, the patterns and growth in community, is a form of knowledge.

As human beings, we may lose touch with nature, but our senses are built for this environment. My ongoing work explores that unconscious collaboration between the natural world and the human mind. Choices of perception, unconscious parsing of the visual field, and cognition inform my practice.

It has been said that if we do not have a word for something, it is unacknowledged, hard to bring into consciousness as an actual thing in the world. This series, Syllabary for a Natural World, reaches back to prehistoric expressions of mark making to explore the innate complexity and language of the natural world, to restart a process of abstraction and understanding.

In this series, I examine an array of questions. How do our minds build meaning through symbols and written language? What if there exist whole sets of language waiting for discovery?  Where does one thing end and the next begin? How does our ability to see just one choice among thousands become available to us?  Where are we at any moment in the dance of filtering perception and meaning?

To these ends I decode the imagery in photographs I have taken, often using the digital darkroom as an alternative process with its own brush strokes. A variety of techniques are used – color extraction, color planes, silhouetting, digital collage, overlaying and recombination – all in the service of a reinterpretation of the nominally seen and felt. My work abstracts an essence: as a form of calligraphy, of slow-motion dance, of communal interaction, of intense meaning.

I am inspired by a childhood lived in nature and books, of trips through the natural world of the Hudson River School, informed by Eliot Porter and Japanese wood block prints, of Klee and Miro, Frankenthaler and Motherwell. More recent photographic influences include Hilla and Bernd Becher, Uta Barth, and John Baldessari.

Always an Outsider

Growing up as an immigrant in the midwest, I first experienced racism at a young age. Looking back, it was so new to me that I didn’t understand the concept until it was explained to me. The idea was planted in my mind that I am an outsider, that what I see in the mirror as normal is considered different to the majority. I can perfect my language, identify as American, but I will always be seen as an outsider. On the other hand, racists and bigots can camouflage into a society that will always see them as normal. This imbalance has affected how I perceive new people I meet.

This work is a visual exploration of how that feeling of uncertainty has become a pervasive thought in my life.

That feeling when you wonder if people will judge your work based on your last name.

That feeling when you walk through a white neighborhood and notice stares.

That feeling when you hear sirens and don’t know if you’re safe.

I know many people have also experienced this feeling. It’s sometimes hard to explain to others who are lucky enough to have avoided discrimination in their lives. I want to visually convey the dichotomy of how difficult it is to know if someone harbors animosity towards my identity versus how easily I can be identified as Asian. Each image is a visual representation of how I have become guarded towards the perceived risk of being discriminated against.

The Birds, the Sky and the Sea

During the past year and a half, craving solace and close human interaction during the global pandemic and after the loss of a dear friend and lifelong partner, in forced isolation, I connected with the natural world and this series evolved.

The birds became companions and evangelists.  Messengers, providing spiritual guidance during dark and frightening days.  Metaphors for a world beyond everyday concern, parables for freedom without boundaries, and augurs for the future.  The birds were a source of inspiration, their strength to survive despite challenges due to grueling annual migrations, loss of habitat and climate change.  The sky and the heavens were a reminder of infinite possibility, hope and freedom, the corals in the sea revealing information about the past that will predict the future and the sky shining down optimism and perspective.

This series is about providing perspective and the strength to rise above challenges. The work was fueled by a desire to escape reality while appreciating the world in all its infinite complexity. With this project I aim to provoke hope during challenging times and transcendency through connection to the natural world.

Passing Through

On a recent road trip, I mentioned that we were “just passing through.” Later, I ruminated on the phrase passing through and its many connotations. When traveling, passing through means you don’t belong in that place, you’re a stranger. Often it signifies penetrating, going beyond or crossing over a barrier. In a different context, passing through can reflect being detached and transient. Ultimately it alludes to death.

This series is a contemplation of transition, impermanence, and remembrance. As I reflect on life in my sixties, I realize that I am in a time of transition as I shed old personae to become more my true self. It is a time of letting go as I accept my own mortality. But while acknowledging that impermanence, I look for vestiges of the past and how they echo back into the present. Families honor their loved ones. Ancient stone ruins still stand. There is beauty in what remains. Images of passages and open doors symbolize my willingness to move forward. I hope to pass through this last phase of life like algae on a flowing stream, floating untethered and free. We are only visitors here.

Can’t You Hear Me

Nestled in a shoebox, undisturbed, the fading indicia on the envelopes reads 1983. Safeguarded against the passage of time, they whisper “forget me not”. The handwriting, rhythmically repeated from sender to receiver, is unmistakably consistent, even persistent. A young man’s words, familiar but distant, ache to be remembered.

A buried voice comes alive in the making of these images, piecing together subconscious rumblings. Like a dream, the succession of images attempts to reconstruct the ideas, emotions, and sensations of a seventeen-year-old’s chaos. The silent danger of abandoned spaces provides the perfect backdrop for memories to resurface. Threads of reality and color combine with a reinterpretation of the past to honor a life lost.

This series is a visual exploration of how the passing of time helps to heal intangible elements of memory. Through this exploration, long held encoded stories can be observed and released.