Vitruvian Woman (2024) is a series of oil paintings of nude females depicted in the act of measuring. The female body is exaggerated, stretched, and precisely touching the ends of the pictorial space within the rectangular shape of the canvas. These female figures are often shown in a setting with no clear sense of up or down or one right way to be seen. The title of the project, Vitruvian Woman, is inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. In the famous drawing, a man in the center of the circle is positioned both in a rectangular shape and a circle. While Da Vinci celebrated man’s ability to divine a connection between human form and the universe, showing an idealized male body, I use the measurement of my body size as the center, showing disconnections between utopian landscapes and the female bodies fit awkwardly into social and cultural norms. 

A critical decision in my work is making the canvas size representative of my body size, suggesting that actual dimensions are in play. One of the first norms I accepted after im/migration was using the United States measuring system. Re-contextualizing the origins of the measuring system of how the ‘foot’ became 12 inches, based on King Henry the First’s foot, to create a new measuring system within the work is shown through not sharing my works in inches but my body size; Reclining (2024), oil on canvas, 50 inches (W) x the breadth size of my two arms (H), and Vitruvian Woman (2024), oil on canvas, the breadth size of my two arms (W) x my height (H). 

The narrative of my practice is a continuous examination of an external and internal imposition placed on living as an Asian American Woman. The shapes of the canvas, as a space that my body physically occupies, and the shapes of circles, as society's expectations and categorizations, are the accumulations of between-ness shown through my works. With the act of measuring as a central idea visually and conceptually, the question of power and norms I accepted while living in the United States is being investigated.