Much of my current work begins with the story of Eng and Chang, a set of conjoined twins in the 1800s, who were known simply as the “Siamese Twins.” Originally born in modern day Thailand, they lived the majority of their lives traveling the Western world as a tourist attraction for PT Barnum.

For me, this story represents current and historical implications and ideas of what it means to be trans cultural. We locate ourselves in relation to those around us: as male or female, Chinese or American, and so forth; our sense of self is dependent on the society around us. Thus, our way of defining ourselves is disjointed, each piece composed of different, and oftentimes conflicting, experiences, leaving us both with a sense of multiple identities and fragmented selves.

I make drawings of reoccurring characters: exotic female East Asian conjoined twins, their conjoined baby girls, and the white man. All the characters have their racial and gender signifiers exaggerated: The East Asian girls have long black hair and yellow skin, the East Asian female babies wear pink, the white man wears blue. The characters are all fragmented, each incomplete, with their fragments floating away from them. The conjoined twins, representing how East Asians are exoticized in the West, also portray the idea of different ‘selves’ within one self/ body. The drawings are done simply in pen and ink and reference the way anime is drawn, as well as traditional Chinese watercolor paintings.