Having witnessed how it chipped away at my life and many lives before me, I refuse to let work kill me. I find approaching work as a portal for self and communal actualization to be much more interesting.
Through ethnography, transmedia, artifacts, and immersive experiences, I tell fantasy non-fiction love stories exploring unconventional and non-traditional worlds of work that uplift the wisdom of Black, Indigenous and queer artists and practitioners who are paving the way forward.
My hope is that each offering emboldens fellow creators to challenge dated systems, define and express work on their own terms, and move us closer to social solidarity economies.
Through ethnography, transmedia, artifacts, and immersive experiences, I tell fantasy non-fiction love stories exploring unconventional and non-traditional worlds of work that uplift the wisdom of Black, Indigenous and queer artists and practitioners who are paving the way forward.
My hope is that each offering emboldens fellow creators to challenge dated systems, define and express work on their own terms, and move us closer to social solidarity economies.
For the better part of the last decade, my art and research practice has explored how inter- and intrapersonal communication and work can be avenues for us to realize our individual and collective potential. I’ve been zooming in on how the language we use to define our work, how we choose our work, and the ways we speak about ourselves and our endeavors can inspire action that bridges worlds, shifts tides, and ultimately liberates us.
My work begins with ethnographic and participatory action research as conduits for meaning making. This research looks like meeting with people across cultures through community forums, one-on-one conversations, day-in-the-life interviews and shadowing to explore places, spaces, systems, and processes in an effort to uncover:
Documenting the process through photo, video, audio, mapping and the written word, I approach the critical analysis of my research with three questions in mind:
The answers to these questions and the synthesis of my research act as the “materials” from which I make art. Sometimes the making manifests as the conceptualization of a coffee table book or archive; other times it manifests as the development of a pilot script for a tv series or blueprint for a large scale installation and festival. I trust my intuition to guide me in making what feels most urgent for the times.
Animation by Yukai Du.