Hey everyone, it is currently 11:41pm in Seattle. I’ve got a few more hours until my final flight to Taiwan. Life is crazy, this weekend I spend finishing this painting you see here. I then woke up this morning, packed, and went to the airport. But yeah, I’m on my way back to Taiwan… it’s been 7 years since I’ve been back and that long since I have seen my extended family other than my mom & my sister. It feels surreal going back… something I’ve been hoping to do for a long time now. I feel like everything that’s been happening over the last few years with my exploration of culture through visual arts & tattoos has been missing this very key piece in the middle: Taiwan. It’s like I’ve been able to study everything through a very thin veil, absorbing and observing from afar… and now I will have the opportunity to see everything I have learned within a context.
The last time I was in Taiwan was a really emotional trip for me. I was trying to take care of family business between me and my father in 2017… many of the issues still persisting or even worse until this day. I spent so much energy then trying to make things right with him… I guess in the end the process is a lot more complicated than I thought. But even so, this will be my first trip to Taiwan without my father and everything that comes with him in the picture. I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling bad for him and myself but after all of this time I find myself detaching… allowing myself to move on and freeing myself from all the weight, pain and hurts that I’ve carried from what I have experienced in our relationship throughout my life. I am freeing myself…
There is No Cheese
I wanted to leave this painting up in Atlanta before I left. There are a lot of paintings that I have been trying to formulate for years in my head…. paintings that speak about my experience as an American, an Asian, and an ex-Christian. All of these experiences are so deeply woven within the context of growing up in the American South, and I think for a while I’ve been trying to find ways to say how I have felt this whole time. I’ve spent a long time trying to articulate these ideas through my art and for whatever reason recently, I just felt like it was time to stop waiting for the “right time” and just do it.
This painting, “There Is No Cheese” is about the American dream - all of these sold to us from the very beginning: pass 1st grade to get to 2nd, 8th to get to high school, high school to go to college, college to get a job, a job to make money, money to do ___________ what? And this is where it’s all at for me. Growing up in this world is like being born into a maze someone else built with the promise of the great prize at the end. But what they don’t tell you is that the prize at the end is created and controlled by the same people who designed the maze. Through media, celebrity and “culture” we are sold the elusive dream of riches, fulfilment, and status. But where do we go when we begin to realize that the thing we’ve been after this whole time never existed in the first place? How will we change our perspective, our use of our time and our values?
This is where I’ve found myself in this very moment of life.
I’m looking for the reasons to live that are beyond the surface now. I’ve realized that for me, there is no more cheese to chase… I feel fulfilled in the material world. I am content with what I have and who I am… and now I feel the questions and the desires begin to deepen.
I’ve set out to find the true “Land Of The Free” - the land of a free soul. I refuse to spend my life in this maze knowing damn well they ate that cheese a long long time ago.