Artist Statement

Art, Literature, and Life

My work explores artistic and literary approaches using ASL (American Sign Language) in narrativity, poetry, calligraphy, presentation, and performance. My work seeks a "denominator" of languages in all modalities (written, signed, spoken, and drawn forms). My works seek to undermine the logocentric traditions of textuality and poetry.

Performativity, Arche-writing, and "Arche-speaking"

My work explores grammatology (art/science of writing) and various ways of writing/speaking with a unique blend of cinematic vocabulary, linguistic choreography, verbal calligraphy, visual poetry, and language, including ASL/Ameslan.

My body is the primary writing instrument. My body, in performance, scribes in the air with or without some materials. Video is not regarded for me as traditionally image-producing; rather, it is treated as a multi-dimensional, digital-temporal paper to scribe on. Flat surfaces, for me, are the materials that capture a trace of language.

Note: by the term "speaking," I am not referred to "vocally speaking;" rather, it is defined as a verbal form, whether its modality is visual-manual or vocal-auditory (known as sign language and speech language, respectively).

Keywords

grammatology, performativity, poetry, verbal calligraphy, textuality, language art, lingual choreography, cinematic vocabulary, literary art, narrative, photocalligraphy, Derrida, logocentrism, arche-writing, deconstruction and reconstruction of language, trace, erasure, palimpsest.

Mediums

video, performance, photography, web art, text, mixed media.