Inner Canon of the Yellow Empress 《黄后內經》
2025. Ink, iodine, salt, safflower, gardenia fruit, tangerine peel and mint from my mother’s garden on xuan paper, mounted on silk
9 x 10 ft
Painted with materia medica—iodine, an antiseptic, and anti-inflammatory herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine and textile dyeing—these scrolls are a somatic reintegration of ancestral healing knowledge. Drawing from the Huangdi Neijing (Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor), a foundational medical text, reinterpreted through the embodied knowledge and labor of diasporic women—this work constitutes both research and prayer. For my loved ones living with chronic pain and cancer. For collective restoration, liberation, towards an alternative canon: where scientific, spiritual, indigenous and ecological epistemologies coexist, and healing is not the absence of disease but presence of connection.
Lotus Sutra, After Bernice Bing
2025. Ink, iodine, lotus leaf, gardenia fruit and safflower on mulberry paper. Hanging scroll; 18 in x 82 ft
The central scroll honors Bernice “Bingo” Bing, a queer Chinese American artist and founding director of SOMArts, where this work now resides.
Install shots by Claire S. Burke, from the 2025 Murphy & Cadogan awards exhibition at SOMArts