Installation > We are

I created this site-specific installation entitled We are for MassQ Ball 2025: Color at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. I installed my work in a couple of different locations in the conifer section at the Arboretum; one in the Japanese Hinoki and Yew area and another in the Western Red Cedar area, in addition to an area on accessible path. My performance took places in the conifer section.

We are is an exploration on memory, history, migration, interconnected relationship with more than humans, and intertwined human histories with them. This project began with collecting plant materials for anthotype photography, alternative method using juice extracted from plants and exposed to sunlight. In this site-specific outdoor installation, it was also important for me to consider wind, natural light, and these magnificent trees at the Arnold Arboretum. I researched archival materials about Japanese plant/tree species at the Arboretum, and incorporated some of the archival images in my work.

Photographic images include my late father at different ages, myself and my sister at young age, my 88 years-old mother from last year, a group of artists from MassQ Ball and staff at the Arboretum, Japanese knotweed, deer, bee, butterfly, and mushroom.

These images of people and nature are sometimes juxtaposed with archival images of trees and men that were photographed in Japan. The archival images were photographed by Western plant collector named Ernest Henry Wilson (1876-1930), a British explorer who introduced about 2,000 Asian plant species to the West, and John George Jack (1861-1949), an American dendrologist who began as a working student at the Arnold Arboretum in 1886, and later became lecturer and taught forestry at Harvard and MIT. All archival images are from the Harvard Botany Libraries.

The fabric pieces were inspired by noren, traditional Japanese fabric dividers often hung between rooms or in doorways. They allow easy passage through a long vertical slit(s) between pieces of fabric, while visually dividing a space into two separate spaces. Movement through it feels more fluid.

The title, We are asks the viewers to finish its sentence and meaning with their own verb/action. Time became an important element in this project from the beginning. From collecting plant materials to make emulsion and exposing images to sunlight, the anthotype photographic process took sometimes several months to get desirable images. Time is experienced differently by different living things. There is a different sense of time that trees and more than humans experience. And there is our human-based time—a journey in one’s life on this earth and mortality in the end. Honoring the passages made by all ancestors before us and time ahead for the future generations, We are celebrates and honors all lives on earth—past, present, and future.



Special thanks to the co-producers of MassQ Ball, Ashleigh Gordon and Daniel Callahan for their invitation to be a part of MassQ Ball 2025, staff at the Arnold Arboretum, especially Sarah Nechamen, Manager of Adult Programming and Events, and horticulturalists team at the Arnold Arboretum for their support, and Lisa E. Pearson, Head of the Library and Archives at the Arnold Arboretum Horticultural Library for her help with high resolution digital files for the archival images.


Archival image references

Jack, Jack. 1905. Cinnamomum Camphora Japan [Title from Recto of Mount.].
Arnold Arboretum Horticultural Library (Jamaica Plain) AAE-00098 (accession number)

Jack, Jack. 1905. Stewartia Pseudocamellia Japan, Lake Chunzenji [Title from Recto of Mount.].
Arnold Arboretum Horticultural Library (Jamaica Plain) AAE-00179 (accession number)

Wilson, Wilson. 1914. Betula Grossa Japan [Title from Recto of Mount.].
Arnold Arboretum Horticultural Library (Jamaica Plain) AAE-03396 (accession number)

Wilson, Wilson. 1914. Cryptomeria Japonica Japan [Title from Recto of Mount.].
Arnold Arboretum Horticultural Library (Jamaica Plain) AAE-03168 (accession number)