I grew up in Istanbul estranged from my cultural background as a Chinese-Turkish minority. My painting practice explores this disorientation while revisiting and reshaping trauma. Memory, conflict, generational trauma, mental illness, and impermanence are subjects that permeate through my work where hybrid or humanoid figures are embedded in liminal spaces, and carry these themes with equal measures of humor and grimness.

Painting is a psychological process to recount my personal history on my own terms, a ritual as painful as it is rewarding. Anthropomorphized figures function as a means of seeking connection with the non-human and mimicking the dehumanization that reverberated through my childhood as an Asian kid. Using sinister yet playful imagery, I seek to simultaneously resist and embrace the uncertainty and alienation rooted in my upbringing and later immigration to the US.