As an immigrant, I try to capture with my art the feelings of chaos and harmony, the sense of belonging and isolation that we often experience at the same time when living in a city. Because I migrated from one city to another, it's also important for me to express how migrants experience displacement and resettlement in urban places. We may feel isolation at times, and yet we also have tremendous strength to keep us hopeful. So I choose recycled cardboard for my painting because the structure of cardboard speaks to these urban sentiments. Cardboard has several layers that are bonded together, and it's like a community where city dwellers can build resiliency and connections layer by layer. I think cardboard reveals those multiple layers of city life that's important for everyone to build a hopeful future. In my painting, I often leave some parts of the surface unpainted. I want to expose the raw surface and raw texture of the cardboard. Those unpainted surfaces represent the vulnerability of a city, our environment, and the identity of home.

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