My work zooms in on the objects, spaces, and rituals of gay life—a world unlike anything else.

Growing up first-generation Chinese American in the LA suburbs, I was handed two impossible life assignments: make the family proud, and don’t be gay. I failed both. Bullied from within and outside the home, it sounds cliché to say that my art saved me. But it did. After graduating from ArtCenter College of Design, I spent the next decade dreaming up fantasy worlds for the entertainment industry—lucrative, often thrilling work, but devoid of anything that resembled my actual life. In 2019, I sold my condo and left the industry to embark on a self-experiment: strip away all non-essentials and see what I'd make on my own terms. This time, without the golden handcuffs. The question of subject matter was short-lived. Answer: gays and the male form, obviously.

Gays are a species I've studied for years—I’m always caught in the middle, observing their natural habitats, asking questions, and participating in ways I'll leave to your imagination. "Like, what do you mean you microdose on Imodium?" Take my Hands Collection, for example. They're simply portraits of hand gestures gay men make every day. Seemingly mundane, yet when painted and presented together, I've witnessed total strangers burst into laughter, eyes shocked at being seen, and even shed tears while standing before the art. The work holds up a mirror and reflects something so precisely, so hilariously, so undeniably us—and in that recognition, strangers rediscover themselves and then each other.

For a long time, I couldn't see myself in what I made. It wasn't until I made the work specific that I finally could. And now, so can others.