“Time travel - 2020”
Acrylic paint + Canvas
4x4x1.25 in.
This time travel series is inspired by the fluidity of time, space, and memory. In this pandemic, I've been exploring how interconnected and in movement everything is - from intergenerational trauma/healing to inner child work. I’m exploring traveling in and through the non linear relationship of time and space with curiosity, play, respect, and openness.
About “Time travel - 2020”: Content warning: anti asian racism
I have been reflecting on march and April of 2020 now that we are past the one year mark of the beginning of the pandemic. I’m time traveling back to the end of march when Tr*mp called covid the “Chinese virus.” At that time so much about the pandemic and quarantining was unknown, but anti Asian racism was too familiar and too unsurprising.
On March 18th, I went on my first 15 min walk four days into my quarantine. The first four days without human contact/touch in my life. Feeling hope that at the end of two weeks, life might go back to normal. But also feeling all the anxiety attack my body with fear of the unknown and known. On that walk, I felt dread leaving the front door of my apartment and I felt dread passing people 6 ft apart on the sidewalk. I didn’t know where that white rage would appear - rage against Asians for inconveniencing them and their families with the virus. Rage that their families and livelihood are threatened by the forever foreigners.
I didn’t venture outside my front door for weeks after that.
Hopping into another time portal to April 5th 2021, a white person was yelling with their windows rolled down as they drove past me while I was on a walk. My guard was already up and I stood alert ready for violent speech or worse - while my body/mind traveled back to March 18th on my first walk in the pandemic. The car past and the yelling wasn’t directed towards me, and I sighed a breath of relief - not this time.
The echos of the recent past and echos of my ancestors are reverberating so loud. I’m taking time to ebb and flow with the grief of the state of our society. Grieving that our BIPOC community have to be on guard all the time and everywhere. Grieving the loss of life, health, resources, relationships due to white supremacy, capitalism, and all the intertwined systems of oppression.