For as long as I can remember, I’ve lived between worlds—East and West, past and present,
masculine and queer. Unseen Boundaries is an invitation into that space of in-betweenness: where
identity is both constructed and dismantled, where desire is layered with history, and where
tradition and rebellion meet in the body.
This exhibition gathers works from nearly two decades—pieces rendered in ink, watercolor, digital
collage, and acrylic. Each one is a fragment of a larger meditation on power, transformation, and
visibility.
In self-portraits like Five-starred Rainbow Flag and Counter-revolutionary Sodomite, I confront the
roles imposed upon me—national, cultural, sexual—and reshape them through a queer lens. In the
Triptych Observe the Propriety, the familiar directives of silence— “Don’t Look,” “Don’t Listen,”
“Don’t Speak”—become both accusation and resistance.
The Dynasty Series—Song, Tang, Qin, Qing—pulls threads from Chinese history and reweaves them
with queer narratives, asking what is preserved, what is erased, and what becomes possible when we
intervene.
Some pieces, like Seafood and Peak Experience, are quieter- drawn from private moments, dreams,
or erotic memory. Others, like M. Butterfly – Beijing 1964, carry the weight of collective myth.
Inspired by the true story of Chinese opera singer and spy Shi Pei Pu and French diplomat Bernard
Boursicot, this work draws from the entangled themes of performance, seduction, and deception.
The story—famously adapted in David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly and later in film—has long
fascinated me. But here, I reimagine it through a distinctly queer lens: less about betrayal, more
about the fluidity of identity, the masks we wear to survive, and the longing beneath the
performance.
These works are not answers. They are offerings. Markers of a journey across internal and external
boundaries—some inherited, others invented. These works don’t ask for approval. They assert a
presence. They refuse erasure. They insist that beauty, desire, and identity are political acts—
especially when they are queer, especially when they are Asian, especially when they are both.
Unseen Boundaries is a call to witness what has long been hidden or dismissed. To feel the rupture.
To sit in the in-between—
And remember we were never invisible. They just refused to see us.
MM