based in Brooklyn, New York, homeland of the Lenape.
I’m a polyphagous artist; I practice within and across multiple disciplines including visual art, dance, music and bilingual writing (with a poetic life of its own or to narrate my other creative works). Image making is my strength and investigating the powers of non-verbal communication is where my passion lands. Why talk if we can sing instead?
My english speaking friends call me Joss;)
女娲计划 Nüwa project
A series of ceramics sculptures from
2022-2023
In this series of works, I focused on the gift of femininity in my family and aimed to conntect it to a more universal sense of female lineage through comparative cultural studies. My curiosity towards mother goddesses drew me to self-guided research on revisionist mythology and cross-cultural archetype studies. For example, I found that the creator of life from clay story is prevalent in numerous regions and cultures besides Nüwa in China.
Borrowing ideas from Black Looks: Race and Representation, a book by Bell Hooks, I stand by the sentiment that no groups or individuals should be remembered solely for their history of oppression, but the strength, the joy, and salvation we generate within ourselves.
Image making wise, I was playing with ancient Chinese visual culture found in archelogical studies (半坡陶符), magical symbols from Hayao Miyazaki’s movies (Who doesn’t love Howl?) and the sorcerer, cave art found in 'The Sanctuary' at the Cave of the Trois-Frères, Ariège, France, made around 13,000 BCE.
- 诗意偶遇 Poetic Encounters
- A series of oil pastel drawings from
- 2022
This practice was my effort to break away from product-oriented mindset and the constant self critique I struggle with, as in wounds in my ego. When making these drawings, myself was my only tool and resource. After a long dissociative hibernation and disconnection from my own livelihood, I wanted to rekindle my passion for art, the kind of innocent freedom I experienced when I was 4.
The exhibit location, a Taiwanese boba store near where I live, is of personal significance. It’s free to put up works, warm and smells sweet. In the 2000s, Taiwanese bubble tea swept through mainland, including Shanghai, an urban city where I lived. Next to my middle school, there was a small place selling boba tea (珍珠奶茶) and popcorn chicken (盐酥鸡). After a long day of taxing schoolwork, I often stopped by on my way home to satisfy my cravings. In my memories, the smell of boba store resembles a quick, cheap, yet nourishing snack and a warm room filled with casual chitchats.
This project is about self discovery, an intimate path to recovery/rebirth, the way home. Process-based, experimental and poetic, this series of works assembles into a maze of metaphors for the viewers’ witness and choice of navigation.
梦里的箴言 Proverbs from the Dreams
A collection of poems written in mandarin from
2020-2021
Censorship is the space where poetry is safe, critical statements are not; metaphors are safe, distinct references are not; private sentiments are safe, public actions are not; ambiguity is safe, clarity is not. This is the legislative space I, my family, and my language, was given to. It’s the frame I constantly oscillate within: volunteerily or unvolunteerily, lean in, run away from, meditate in, rebel against and strategize upon: a necessity for survival as an artist, a daughter, and, simply, a human who craves for dignity.
栖身之地 A Place to Land
A collection of glass sculptures from
2020-2021
This series of sculptures were exhibited in Metcalf building room 304 as a curated exhibition. The entire room was text-less. Outside the room, I installed a caution sign casted on a plaster stand, a door covered with felt, a written version of my thesis, and a wall text describing my practice.
This project is about the sexual assault committed by my art mentor when I was 18. He was the person who inspired me to study arts and offered me tremendous support through the draining process from learning, training, perfecting my craft to applying for college. I had known him since I was 14. It was about him, about betrayal, abandonment and violence commited towards my body, what it’s like to viscerally experience the physiological diminishment of borders--an unwanted entry. It was what I needed to do with my expensive remaining time at RISD, where I wouldn’t have ended up without him. I resented him, the school included, as part of his heritage, his vision, his irreversible mark on my body and path. RISD, this school he picked for me, repelled me and brought me gut-churning anxieties and deep-rooted shame. Subsequently, this project comes with intense emotional complexities: the reality I had to face day by day for more than four years of my life.
触发 Trigger
A series of multimedia works from
2015-2016
I remember going to the studio six days a week and working all day. I kept drinking beers and smoking cigarettes to calm my anxious drained body and keep it going. Day after day I went back home, felt exhausted and sad, and sat on bed for hours, just stared into the wall. Not do anything. I was physically and emotionally burnt out and had no idea how to deal with all those emotions that leashed out through the art making process which I had been suppressing all this time, the only way I knew. The thing that kept me going was Hu’s validation and encouragement, and my drive to seize the only escape from the asbusive household and depressing system I grew up in. RISD, art and him was the only exit I saw.
This body of works were later exhibited in my high school gallery. It was my first solo show and I named it TRIGGER. Now I look back I realize how prophetic (一语成谶) it was: the meaning of trigger in the context of CPTSD, an instrumental part of my mental health experience. Full of triggers and living in compulsive hypervigilance non-stop was the reality I inhibited since 2016, when my mentor sexually assaulted me in his office.
These works comfort and trigger me at the same time. I guess it’s because I’m not sure how to feel about myself back then, though I know I’m supposed to love and accept her. I remember being a sharp, sensitive and very difficult teenager and no one knew what to do with me, incluidng myself. I miss her though. I miss her a lot.
我
A piece of self-confessional writing from
2015
I was into Allen Ginsberg, Stanley Kurbick, Pulp/Oasis/the Libertines, and Northern Chinese folk music. I spent many Friday/Saturday evenings in livehouses and underground techno clubs in Shanghai.
I’m one of the very few Chinese people who have body odor genes, so rare that convenience stores don’t carry deodorants. I had no access to effective odor control products until I came to the US. I spent years clentching my armpits, avoiding exercises, and intentionally wearing less clothes so that I won’t sweat. I also had bladder control issues because I hated the squat toilets in school. Usually I avoided drinking water all day and only peed after I got home. Sometimes though, when it got bad enough, I peed in my pants in the classroom. It happened couple of times. In winter my pants were drenched in urine. Weirdly, no one called me out, though I think they all noticed.
It’s still wild when I think about how I smelled like a beast through puberty, irresistibly, of urine and odors. (maybe subconsciously out of territorial needs, if we go neo-freudian)
有的时候看着一只蚊子，一头在草原上眺望发呆的雄狮，一只在夜归时蹲在垃圾桶边的野猫，我并不觉得我们有很大的区别。
我们的身后是咆哮而怒吼着的巨浪，我们以平等而独立的姿态登上诺亚方舟。
我们在昏暗嘈杂发射着五颜六色光的狭小的房间里歌唱，我们脚踩着玻璃渣跳舞，我们用一杯又一杯酒精把自己灌醉，我们低吟、高歌、长笑、卧倒。我们在没有人的房间里换上奇怪的一件又一件衣衫帽子头巾破布，狰狞地在床上大声嘶吼歌唱，那是不成调的曲子，用凄厉的声带撕扯出的怒吼。
我们在期待。我在期待。
我在期待那原始的力量再一次的迸发。
它勇猛而势不可挡。
而我清晰地知道，它就在我的身体里。它甚至主宰着我，偏移着我的意识。
这种力量并非类似于巫术的畸形扭曲，而是一种原始的浑厚的力量。
在登上诺亚方舟的一刻所有生物都具备的力量。兽性。
我觉得我是一头幼小的猛兽。我曾在被击打被训斥时低下头暗自哭泣，也曾嘶吼咆哮哭泣，用锋利的前爪去攻击，去铭记每一道血痕。
我想这并不是人格分裂，因为这种力量是持续的。
人类用法律压制住了嗜血的欲望，用伦理纲常逼迫野兽戴上镣铐，用舆论用眼神用照相机把白熊深深地钉在了靶子上。
然而我却知道自己只是人模狗样。
这并非佛与众生平等的道貌岸然，因为野兽总是自私的。它用贪婪而饥饿的眼神盯着你的枪，你的脚，你微向下倾的头颅。它不会准许你抢走它的任何一口食物。当你以枪支、武力胁迫时，你可以看见它的眼神。它耿耿于怀，眼睛里是加倍的仇恨与欲望。
从某一刻起，我深刻地理解到自己与发情的母猪觅食的雄狮没有半分区别。
我的欲望就是那从远古社会就有的欲望。我渴望快乐，食物的快乐权力的快乐高人一等的快乐，我避免痛苦，逃避饥饿的痛苦死亡的痛苦。
我想在那锋利而坚硬的都市中我总有一天会奔腾着变成一只猛兽，在所有人的目光下怒吼嘶吼。那种力量撕裂我的皮肤剖开我的肌肉攫取我活生生跳动着的心脏。我漂浮在油腻的水上，身上是污泥是海藻是阳光穿不透的浮躁。我的耳边是咕嘟的泡泡声以及另一个世界传出的锅铲碰撞的吵闹声，我的眼前是油腻的灰蓝色的天。我并不恐惧这种力量占据我的身体，我愿意让它张狂而疯狂地在我的身上生长。
我看见了一头雄狮。我看见了一只野猫。
我看见了核战之后的自己穿着破烂的衣装，露出大片的肌肤，走在满目疮痍的人间拥吻着深爱的人享受着雨水泥巴掉发暗日坠入爱河。
而此时此刻我坐在冰冷的地下脚下是十几层混凝土的城堡，身边是幽暗见不到底的楼梯，绿色的墙面，蓝色的垃圾桶，还有闪烁着红光的电梯上上下下，在阳光之下是一切最平常最真实的世界。
野兽在意淫。