A celebration of chosen family, Family Tree is the culmination of a multimedia project I created over the summer of 2023. I traveled around the country in pilgrimages to my loved ones. Lugging around my DSLR camera, I took candid photographs of each person while venturing through the bustling city or strolling along a lakeside trail. I then painted their portraits, wrote accompanying vignettes, and created a 52-minute film documenting my journey and process of creation. My solo exhibition at Stanford University’s Mohr Gallery in March 2024 featured twelve paintings, alongside twelve accompanying texts and inkjet prints of the digital photographs.

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With this body of work, I explore the importance of family constructed by acts of free will rather than accidents of blood, investigate how relationships with others can constitute the self, and pay homage to those who taught me unconditional love. Emerging from my own familial trauma, I aim to rethink the family beyond the nuclear mold, embracing new modes of social relations that transcend confining traditional structures. I build my own concept of home – one not grounded in a physical location, but instead contained within a dispersed network of relationships that endure beyond spatial proximity. In other words, I locate home in other people.