THE WINDS ARE CHANGING
My experience as an immigrant in Montana for the past ten years has radically changed my life and art practice. Here I gradually developed a sense of place, belonging and purpose. This community now stands in place of my family. Through not only traumatic experiences but also the happiest moments of my life, I found both myself and the professional path I needed to take.
I flow in-between communities: local, global and intra-personal ones. In December 2020 I pledged my heart to the United States to become a citizen. Since then I’ve been reflecting upon my place and responsibilities in the communities I’m a part of.
The Winds are Changing is an exhibition of paintings that archives the sometimes fleeting, but also life-changing moments and experiences of the past year. Within these fast-paced environments, interactions with Montanans and my intimate personal experiences, I relay a shift in my own life and the collective one. As I pass through Bozeman’s neighborhoods I witness rapid changes, the play of old and new, and a mutual feeling of unpredictability. Textures, lines from scaffolding on construction sites, deteriorating facades of historical buildings and the plant life within the scenes, all appear in my paintings. In my work, through a range of media, I create an unstable, ambiguous atmosphere that reflects and reminiscences upon my transitional experiences and shared stories from teaching and organizing community projects.
In a world where we communicate digitally and after a global pandemic that further isolated us from one another, I feel a need for gatherings, togetherness and exchange. Paintings such as Note to Self are invitations to shift focus away from one’s individual to the communal needs, and trade disconnection for connectedness and interdependency. By contemplating context and the patterns of relationships and interdependency in nature’s ecosystems, as well as our relationship within the natural world, we will find powerful answers to our need of living in sustainable communities while fostering a healthy relationship with the environment. Changing and sometimes troubling moments like the ones we’ve lived, can be moments of selfreflection and the re-negotiation of our actions, both past and present. We can best use these times for transforming and reformulating our identities in relation to our community, and for creativity, flexibility and collaboration.
