My Father’s Daughter is artwork born out of frustration—a conversation with myself, an imagined version of myself, and the audience that looks. By both looking as white-passing as I do and having never connected with Chinese culture due to assimilation, I often feel that I must present evidence of my “Chineseness” to others to prove that I am biracial. While wearing a jacket bought for me by my parents, I perform in front of the camera to create a digital calligraphy, formatted in direct reference to Chinese artist Xu Bing’s calligraphic system known as “Square Word Calligraphy,” fusing photographs together to create a single piece of writing. While written in English, the piece tests the limitations of recognition both in an artistic and anthropological sense. How much can you know from simply seeing? How much do you need to? What changes when recognition is achieved? What, if anything, is gained?
