Governors Island

Governors Island, 2020 - Installation - Found objects; Presented at the NARS Foundation inspired by the nature, ecology and rich military history of the Island located at the heart of New York after a three months art residency. Titled “Grass Jelly Drink” (2020), the work is a pun on the idea of beliefs: Are your beliefs “grass rooted” or “grass jellied” how informed are they? The work deploy itself through a sense of remoteness and the fragmentation of an oversaturated image of flowers, grass and nature.

An artwork which I cannot remember the artist lost in memories: There’s this idea of a patch of grass being a close up to a landmark at the Normandy Landing - a military historic landmark… from an undisclosed photographer/painter I’ve heard in a class nearly 15 years ago.

A shell of a ghost from another realm: There the image of a blooming flower that cannot be picked no matter how one’s try. A being stuck in a parallel plane.

A pandemic which closed borders: There’s this sense of alienation due to COVID as scapegoating is at height of systemic discrimination against Asians through the use of a can of the juice of the grass jelly kind. The brand itself “chin chin” means “please please” and/or “kiss kiss” in mandarin and is a sentence used to signify health during toast; kids use it when they want to be kissed, cuddle or picked up. It refers to, in itself, as the “Chinese kiss” - or as the U.S. President likes to refer to as the “Chinese Virus”.

The alienation of others for a political purpose: There’s this idea of beings from different planes of reality vainly trying to interact - A sense of remoteness. Fragmentation of a disjointed image which itself was exploded with saturation. The semantic of “grass” but not through itself but as a disarticulated reference.

This particular project was possible due to the support of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts through their respective reliefs funds; and the Trust for Governors Island.