In the past few months, I focused on painting, and incorporated intaglio printmaking into my practice. Predominantly, I worked on several pieces/ideas at the same time and completed them at different times. In my practical studio work, mark-making can be spontaneous. I constantly think about shapes and marks, and transfer the ‘gestures’ I’ve seen from real life into artworks.

My recent body of work represents my concerns about beauty standards and their relationship with race, e.g., the ideologies that have shaped what we perceive as attractive appearances, how it occurs, and the way people follow problematic beauty trends. I discovered my interest in this subject on social media platforms. Through making related artworks, I have been exposing existing social issues to the contemporary art world and challenging how we perceive beauty standards.

My understanding of painting draws a connection to language. This connection is embodied in my use of language and pictures. Titling the artworks is a significant element in my practice. When creating my Beauty Standards series, I came out with titles of paintings, then searched for specific imageries. Many of my resources came from the internet, such as diagrams in medical journals and aesthetics plastic surgery advertisements. The titles serve as hints, poetic, and reappropriated elements in my work. Occasionally, there could be several imageries linked to the same title.