Yield, 2023. 109” x 51”. Gouache on drafting film. Installed at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco, CA). Photography by Jenna Garrett.
Yield is a self-portrait triptych on drafting film, in which I inhabit multiple stages of disintegration and regeneration — decomposing into a compost pile that I am also about to begin shoveling. I depict myself with some of my gardening tools and with common Chinese plants/fungi that marked my childhood (persimmons, cabbage, wood's ear mushroom, enoki mushrooms) and also signify abundance. I often paint with gouache on drafting film because the drafting film lends itself to constant iteration: the paint can always be wiped off, smeared. It’s always just floating on the surface, marks temporarily arrested in time. Originally commissioned for the Bay Area Now 9 Triennial at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Yield was updated in 2025 for an exhibition at St. Joseph’s Art Society, in San Francisco (CA). Updated version below.
Yield, 2023/2025. 109” x 51”. Gouache on drafting film. Installed at St. Joseph’s Art Society (San Francisco, CA).