I think of my work as artifacts of my own particular mixed culture, shaped by my experience as an immigrant to the U.S. in the late ‘80s during my early teens. Over the long process of assimilation, I found myself belonging neither here nor there—existing somewhere in between. Over time, I came to accept and even celebrate this peculiar in-between space as my own.

I see my culture as a confluence of multiple influences, with no fixed hierarchy or order. It is made up of preexisting ideas—fragments of traditions, trends, and mass culture—constantly borrowed, reshaped, and reinterpreted. This is reflected in my work, where images are appropriated and reused to create new visual languages and meanings, much like how hip-hop music samples and remixes sounds to form something new.

Visually and conceptually, I am interested in melding and mending ideas that are often framed as opposites—East vs. West, high vs. low, commodity vs. craft, tradition vs. fads, and icon vs. iconoclasm. My work plays with these tensions, using appropriation, humor, and iconic imagery to explore how meaning is constructed and deconstructed in contemporary life.

My art-making is a way of exploring and documenting this ever-changing, mutating, and polyglot reality. It is informed by my life, shaped by my everyday experiences as a middle-class artist and dad, who, like everyone else, is just trying to make sense of it all.