Cicada shells, old medical textbooks, my dad's 1998 "Thanksgiving dinner menu" from Fort Hood. Pieces of personal history fuel my art, things that came before me, and the things that will come after. I give the disregarded a place on my wall or inside my desk drawer. Absence creates a desire for excess; I still find myself as an adult asking about my dad's life before he came to the States and wonder what caused my mom to fear for stability and routine so much that she joined the military. I keep my Grandmother's copy of "Gray's Anatomy" on my bedside table, preserving her through drawings of bone marrow, muscle cells, and the thymus. I, almost desperately, make physical spaces for memories and history, before they're lost to insignificance.

My work can be primarily described as archival. Through my practice, I am documenting personal history and my family's lived experiences. Flattening years of documentation and conversations into one drawing, a photograph. I aim to create an experience with my work that breaks down a traditional gallery space, an environment entrenched in academia and largely inaccessible to many. My work isn't intended to be read as a series of paintings on a wall. My body of work is a space, a memory preserved in a room.