As a mixed media artist and first-generation immigrant, my work maps the psychological landscapes of displacement, adaptation, and resilience within urban spaces. During my first months in NYC, I would stroll around the city with a camera and my eyes wide open, in awe. The Lower East Side - where languages overlap and cultures collide - resonates deeply with my artistic inquiry. Through collage, I examine how shared streets become emotional terrains, how memories overlap with fantasies. 

'Artificial Joy', with its distorted subway interior, mirrors the surreal experience of early adaptation - moments of wonder and estrangement on the J train toward Essex Street. The bright palette is both playful and disorienting, reflecting the joy we perform while assimilating into unfamiliar rhythms.

'Anxiety' represents the feeling of wandering lost amid the layered architecture of a new city. Influenced by the stark facades of tenements near Rivington and Ludlow, a little figure - me - walks the city’s compressed history, negotiating the invisible weight of memory and exclusion.

'Broken Rules' draws from the scenes of scaffolding, repair, and construction often seen at LES - Delancey or Bowery Streets in particular. Silhouettes climb through cardboard slats like barriers, evoking the persistence of those who rebuild life from fragments.

Each collage is made of printed imagery, decorative paper, and acrylic, blending personal memory with the environment and architectural references to suggest how new identity is assembled from external cues. My collages show emotional journeys through the process of personal transformation.