Summer 1996

Summer 1996, 2025

mixed media sculpture - reclaimed and repurposed materials, papier-mâché, and acrylic beads

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This piece blends iconography from my childhood, raised in an intergenerational household reliant on food stamps and public assistance programs to survive. It shows an orange juice concentrate tube melting across a kitchen counter. The tube reads “[agent] Orange Juice”, a critique and a nod to the war violence that contributed to my family's poverty and displacement as Southeast Asian refugees. Beaded ants sit in the spreading juice, making home in our already full house, becoming beneficiaries of our refugee sustenance—the parallels between our shared existences in the eyes of the powers that be, is not lost on me. Underneath, soaked through, are food stamps rewritten in my own words giving context to this distinct memory.