Cindy is a former scientist and has been making art full-time for the past three years. Her work emphasizes experimentation and uses materiality to explore the dynamics of interaction and the tension of intermediate states, particularly with respect to societal transformations.
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To give voice to what it’s like to be on the receiving end of an unending stream of microaggressions, these are thoughts, mostly unspoken, in response to actual conversations or situations Cindy has been in, mostly in Massachusetts and California. Cindy uses fortune cookies (an Asian-American invention) as a familiar and acceptable, if bland, delivery vehicle that people are willing to consume. There is a disposition to consume without embrace – consume people’s food, labor, culture, but with the understanding that they’re other, they’re lesser, their function is to serve.
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The now-defunct International Prototype of the Kilogram (aka “Le Grand K”) was until recently the global standard for the kilogram unit of mass. Carefully protected by a set of three nested bell jars under vacuum to guard against contamination or deterioration, it formed the basis for an essentially arbitrary system of measurement around which entire societies and economies were formed. This piece, in which a mixture of lighter shades of face powder are pressed into a cylinder, evokes the pseudoscientific vision that fabricated and enshrined the concept of race and “whiteness,” and the multilayered, systematic strategies used to defend and maintain an arbitrary and crumbling paradigm.
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Among the ~68 mil refugees and migrants worldwide are >28 mil children. These toys made from emergency blankets straddle the tension between the possibility of a resilient, thriving generation and the impossibility of being caught up in hostile geopolitical circumstances.
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The quilt depicts the Authagraph projection of the world map in embroidered French knots. This projection more accurately represents the relative sizes of the continents, and is viewed from a celestial reference point at the north pole rather than privileging any particular country, appealing to a broader sense of humanity that supersedes national borders.
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The parachute, which appears to be either deflating or just catching theair, evokes both a safe landing device and the miniaturized world of a childhood game. In this game, children stand all along the circumference of the parachute and fling it up so that it catches the air, enabling some to run across to theother side underneath the temporary dome before it collapses and find new neighbors on the other side, with repeated trials resulting in waves of movement.