My work is about the cultural rift I experience as an Asian American. I feel disconnected from my parents’ culture and not yet fully present in the place of my upbringing in West Virginia. There are many aspects of being Asian American that stem from personal shame and obligation. I cannot speak my parents’ language, and so I cannot fully connect with my relatives in Taiwan, and I feel guilty and ashamed for viewing this cultural disconnect as a burden.

There are also many misconceptions of Asians and Asian Americans. From being docile, submissive, and robotic, to being unfairly compared against other minorities and people of color using the “model minority” trope. We have been historically displayed as the example of a good minority, one that simply followed the rules, works hard, and achieves success despite hardships. These harmful ideals are imposed upon us while ignoring the complicated differences in class and privilege between all minority communities. Not only does this alienate and pit us against other racially and culturally marginalized people, but also invalidates our experiences of discrimination and marginalization.

Data analysis is the process of sorting through mass data (usually numbers) in a structured process in order to present a clean, condensed, and informative graphic image. I am investigating what it means to identify as Asian American, feeling fragmented between two cultures and trying to find a whole identity, through an interpretation of data analysis. I often feel confined into categories and stereotypes. My work compares my contention with these racist classifications as “data points” breaking free from the guidelines of data analysis. In my work, I consider data analysis to be an imaginary power, one that sorts data points as either “good” or “bad”. My process of analyzing data considers the autonomy of each data point, where they are not numbers, but they are sentient organisms. My ‘living’ data points warp and twist out of the grids they are born from to transform into figures or organic forms. The grids I draw become rooms and structures that these data points live in or struggle against.