Materia Medica
Matrilineal, CCA PLAySPACE Gallery
2025
I was raised by my grandmother, who practiced Buddhist sutra calligraphy daily as prayer to bring karmic compassion to ancestors and all sentient beings. She was the first woman from her village to attend medical school, before the Cultural Revolution interrupted her education and sent her to labor at a salt factory. Her calligraphy was devotion and resistance at once. My work is a continuation of her spiritual and healing labor, a practice of reintegrating matrilineal knowledge fragmented by migration and upheaval. I painted these scrolls at Nai-Nai’s home studio this summer. The earthy color of ink comes from traditional Chinese medicine herbs that helped my grandfather alleviate side effects from cancer therapies. In the long, slow process of tending to life, I am finding my practices in art and medicine intersect materially through ancestral healing practices.
"Healing Through Memory: Matrilineal," Rewind Review Respond, vol. 11, by Ashley Spencer
