Growing Pains
Through anecdotes and memories from my childhood as a female second generation Asian American, I consider my own “growing pains”. Unfolding recollections from my youth continue to make me question the influences from societal norms of the ideal, alongside my family’s guidance for myself to have a life less burdensome as a minority.
Impacted re-examines a widely familiar game from adolescence, the fortune teller origami. The game, made from a folded piece of paper, proposes 4 questions with multiple options for each as an answer and forms a prediction for your future from your answer. In my installation, the quantity of fortune teller origami in Impacted attempts to draw the viewer to scrutinize the game beyond the surface level. If the questions are; Who will you marry? What kind of car will you have? What kind of house will you live in? How many kids will you have?, then the subliminal implications could reflect how society sees young females.
The standard of what young girls should strive for, according to the social structures that we grow up around, does not allow space for larger aspirations at an age where that is most important. While the goals that I held for myself were once bright, opening myself to new perspectives and reflecting on what they mean for me is ultimately the essential process of how I develop my point of views and what I value.
My work in Growing Pains analyzes the structures that influence the development of self within childhood and adulthood through the lightheartedness of creating with common materials and recognizable shapes, which helps cut the bitterness of seeing ourselves switch roles from the child to the adult to the parent.