With both of my parents having no relatives in America and thousands of miles away from their home countries, their food is what primarily carried their culture to me and my siblings. The left side is a traditional Malaysian noodle soup, Laksa, while the left is a chicken kofta with a thai chili pepper, basmati rice and white onions. Both dishes are comfort meals of mine when I feel away from home, and I am grateful to be a part of two flavorful and rich cultural backgrounds.

"El Rancho" that my abuelo y abuela owned is where my mom has some of her fondest childhood memories, along with her 9 hermanos y hermanas. Mis abuelos sold their ranch and moved from city to city, perhaps due to curiosity and new opportunities. My mother completed 5th or 6th grade and then as a teenager, began learning to sew clothes and cut hair at a trade school. Her father's machismo demanded she be a "homemaker" instead and forced her to quit. Her stories of Mexico are always filled with amusement, humor, wonder, beauty, joy, trauma, longing, and grief. At the age of 19, my mother was invited by her brothers and sisters to come see the "oh so beautiful and wonderful United States". Driven by her curiosidad and a spirit too vast for a kitchen, she and her teenage brother to take a dangerous trek through lands and across the border "just to visit". They arrived on the 4th of July. Months later, she started working at a local potato factory with plans to take a little money back to Mexico to open up her own salon. There she met my white, American father. Within 6 months they were married. A year later she had me. She then received "legal alien" status. Four and a half years after I was born, she had my brother. We started our own families and she now has 6 grandchildren, some who are getting ready to enter college and follow their own curiosities. Beneath her smiles and laughter, I see a grief for her homeland and the life that could have been had she returned. My mother is a woman who walks between two worlds, forever a stranger to the U.S. who sees her brown skin and hears the accent on her tongue and a stranger to her homeland she left at 19. Where does she belong? She belongs to us. A legacy, because of her wild curiosidad.

Immigration is an imperfect mirror for reflection. We pick and choose cultures and traditions to compose an ordinary and entirely original life - one layered from deliberate choices and unplanned tears.

When my mother was young, she dreamed only of having a small piece of land to plant flowers. In pursuit of that dream, she left her family and country behind. This is the representation of her garden, with her story as the foundation for the beauty she curated despite the many hardships she had to bear.

3rd generation exiled truth teller (in collaboration with KC Hsiao).

"Wondering about willpower is vacation already. Imagine, you can choose, this or that? Me and daddy never choose. Coming here was like going to nice restaurant called America where we eat leftovers of what everyone else order. And in the restaurant we also wash all the dishes and get yelled at... But we never thought, is this meaningful? Is this horrible pain meaning something? What is the purpose? What is the goal? We are happy we are all alive all together. So what I think about people who wonder what is the meaning of life? I think... this person want to do perfect job for being philosopher. Or they are very smart at come up with excuses to not do any work." – So Many Olympic Exertions, Annelise Chen

My identity is and will always be polarizing and complex. I’m a 1st gen Florida-born, Haitian New Yorker. My steps are identifiable by those who set the pace for me to continue in them.

I come from swamps, marshes, mountains. I come from shouting on rooftops, shouting in the streets, shouting for revolution.

I come from connection. Through shared spliffs with strangers, last swipe before 8:30 pm ( but actually last swipe is at 8:59pm and it's 8:54.), the internet, and through spiritual transit.

I connect through shared libations and a common sound. I’m a keepsake, I’m kept by my ancestor’s sake. I’m molded by a mindset that is never laying dormant.

I’m loud like a New Yorker, I’m loud like a Haitian, I’m loud like a Floridian. A common sound.

I define kind like a New Yorker, Kind like a Haitian, Kind like a Floridian. A common mind.

I am the heart and the mind in one accord. I’m kept for their sake.

My birth father, mother, and many members of my mother's family immigrated to the U.S. from Ahmadabad, India, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. My father, whose photo you can see in one of the documents in this piece, died by suicide three and a half months after I was born in 1986. He was 36. My mother is what I call an “unreliable narrator,” and there's a lot I don't know about my family history. I found my parents' petitions for naturalization—along with those of several of my mom's siblings, their spouses, and a couple of my older cousins who were born in India—in digitized archival records on ancestry.com. I layered some of these documents over a map of India with “Al-Mu’minoon,” the Arabic word for “the believers” cut out. My family is Muslim, and our last name “Momin” is a variation of “Mumin”—believer. Although my lack of belief in Islam has resulted in a fraught relationship with my family, this piece honors their belief in a better life in a new country for themselves and their children.

Memory is a tide - what gets washed away, what pools in crevices or remains a bit longer, before the next wave? What do we want to hold on to while we can?

Drawing common and personal elements of Pilipino diaspora + immigrant working class struggles, My Father's Journey captures the personal and all too common story of leaving one's homeland & family to build a new life in a country founded on white supremacy culture & violence against immigrants. Literature excerpt from 'America is in the Heart' by Carlos Bulosan 1946

Capiz, Philippine Soil, Barbed Wire, Glitter.

Have you seen my friend? we havent heard from him since november, he's not a second gen like me he's a DACA dreamer. me and my friend are too scared to look him up in the ICE database because what if it just logs that info when they didnt know about him in the first place? I went to his apartment, last time the light was on but now it's not. Toni, if your reading this, let us know your okay.

In the winter or yin season, trees will appear bare and lifeless. We don't expect much from them as they save their resources, entering a state of dormancy or "hibernation" to survive frigid temperatures and deficits. What is seen on the surface during the 3 moons of winter is only part of the story. This piece is an invitation to remember the necessity and imagine the possibility of deep rest, integration and restoration. One might find a miracle or a mystery, a more introspective and transfomative energy is occurring in the dark void underneath the surface.

Be courageous.

In a nation that seeks to exploit and dispose its immigrants, it takes a collective sense of humanity to persist and resist.

This interactive piece explores how language can flatten the immigrant experience, reducing complexity into something that is socially readable, but not fully understood. Drawing from my Taiwanese American background, the piece is a Chinese coin concealed behind a veil, the piece centers the word "sorry" and it's equivalent chinese translations. It is this word that is at the site of negotiation-- between politness, misinterpertation and erasure. Viewers are invited to lift the veil and spin the coin, enacting the gesture of uncovering and reconsideration. The work asks, where have we accepted being made two dimensional, either in our selves, our families, or in our communities--- and what might it mean to bring depth back into those spaces?

You have seen me everyplace that you go

Seattle, Dubai, Budapest, Cairo

No song, no symbol, no plumage to boast

A capable mutt, the mutable crow.

I caw and croak in both sand and snow,

And yet no one will call me their own.

If you will, please, just let me out.

I vow to have a home.

From learning my language to practicing classical dance, I have been lucky to experience tender moments of reclamation in my life. These opportunities would not be possible without those who show up and create space for me and fellow koun khmer. Each hand belongs to someone I've had the honor of being in community with. They perform the motions of romvong: a circle dance performed at celebrations and especially Khmer New Year gatherings during the month of April. In romvong, a pinched thumb and index finger represent a flower bud (ស្លឹកខ្ចី) and alternates with the flexed palm of an unfurling leaf (ស្លឹក) to embody the cycle of life. In this work I hope to convey its vibrant and playful energy as well as proclaim my love for my community, which nourishes and blossoms me again and again.

i painted this while thinking about my maternal and paternal grandmas. i’m pretty sure they hated each other and traumatized my parents. but they both loved collecting pretty things and doted on their grandkids beyond what they could show their own. i know some of their trauma was from immigrating from korea to the states during the 70s.

i find comfort in copying the rituals i observed as a child. so i’ll sit on the floor eating apple slices with a tiny fork, pat pat pat serums on my face until i resemble a glazed pastry, and vibe to korean singing performances. i’ll collect pretty trinkets and line my windows with sheer jogakbo (korean patchwork fabric) to remind me of a safe belonging.

I dream a hazy vision between my teary eyelids where my ancestors didn’t have to be resilient. They lived to be kind and generous, rather than mean and protective once they touched American soil. What goodness would they have passed down instead of terror?

I dream a hazy vision where West Asia isn’t ’the middle east’. Where people are viewed as sacred and precious. Where Brown bodies are worshipped and respected.

I dream a hazy vision where I don’t need to be resilient. Where I don’t need to fight for the future of my niece, who doesn’t know the word ‘Lebanese’ because it is dangerous.

I am resilient. I am tired. I choose to keep fighting.

A luta continua (“the struggle continues”) shows that this struggle is not confined to one moment, but persists across time, lived through bodies, families, and futures. Inspired by my grandmother - a dollmaker and seamstress from Mozambique- each figure represents a stage of growth from youth to adulthood, shaped by the lasting effects of of colonialism and imperialism.

New look, same weaponized xenophobia and racism!

What childhood memories remind you of home? What sacrifices were made for you to be here?

A cup of tea is memory, belonging, and poetry. The story is invisible until you face it directly. We are all, in our own ways, tasting familiarity in the dregs of what stirs 'home.'