Sister

Fall 2021

Pendant 1 4’’ x 5’’ x 2’’
Copper, red thread

Pendant 2 8’’ x 6’’ x 0.75’’
Red thread, yarns, acrylic

Fabric  18’’x14.5’’
Yarns

There were a few years that I and my younger sister didn’t talk to each other even though we live in the same house. I went back to rethink why and how this relationship began and relates to stories that happened in our childhood. At ten years old I was mad at five years old her tearing my homework down though she was unintentional. My expectation of punishment didn’t get fulfilled by my mother but “She is young, you should be tolerant to your sister.”. I mimic the shape and texture of paper by using etching and metalsmithing on copper and cutting it into two separate pieces. The Chinese characters written on the surface illustrate words and phrases I heard from my parents in my childhood and still hear right now, telling me to be a role model and tolerate my younger sister. These words accumulated and led to the gap between me and my sister.
However, because we are family, our emotional connection is not only hated but still exists in mixed feelings like love, anger, pride, etc. This complex mixture of emotions and blood heritage ties a knot between us. To illustrate this, I soldered using jump rings on the back of copper as a connection between the two broken pieces. Luckily, as time pass the ice between us began to melt and conversations start to exist.