Cats, Little Donna's, Greater New York

I was cast in the ensemble every year in my high school musicals. That's fine, I'm not lamenting over it, I was too aware of being perceived to perform well in auditions! But the love of musical theatre has stayed with me. It's so thrilling to be in an audience and witness somebody (an actor, who is also just a person) pour all of themselves into being somebody else at the apex of vulnerability. I saw Cats The Jellicle Ball with Lauryn and it was so amazing in so many ways. I'll preface this by admitting that I haven't ever seen the original Cats on Broadway, or the movie, so I didn't know the story before. And I also don't have the language or knowledge to write critically about this or do anything but gush.

I had such a ball! The audience was so spirited and I wish we had brought fans. I don't normally feel comfortable vocalizing my support for performers in the style that is customary to ballroom, but I was losing my voice by the end of the show. Okay, that's all I have on that because I go to Broadway shows to enjoy myself. Here's a photo of us after a sweet older lesbian told us we looked cute!

I went with Michelle to Little Donna's in Fells Point. I can't even describe the facial expressions we were exchanging as we took each bite. We started off with an asparagus and fern salad, then pierogies, and a fig and smoked gouda pie to finish. Chili oil on the pierogies, first of all, and apple jam on the pie? So delicious, so filling. I love kitchen creativity and I love Baltimore.

This past weekend I finally saw Greater New York. It was also my first time visiting MoMA PS1. I found the Pipilotti Rist floor piece! I went with a new friend who had also not seen the show yet. I love going to see a show with somebody who I'm getting to know and learning what stands out to them.

Coral Dictionary, an installation by Chang Yuchen, is an exploration of linguistic creation. Part of why I was so mesmerized by this project may be that I'm a linguistics nerd, but I also felt a lot of my linguistic curiosities reflected and acted out in this project. As I've been so focused on language learning for the past year or so, I've been looking back on the evolution of my relationship to Farsi. Particularly, that funny period of ~8 years where I had taught myself to read and write, but didn't continue to practice speaking. Being stuck in this flux of literacy; having the embodied knowledge to read but lacking the true knowledge of understanding, I sat for a long time on the personal meanings that formed in the alphabet. They found their way into my artwork and writing, where I played with legibility and the "secret" code that I was forming within the art I displayed at my PWI with < 5 Farsi speakers. But the difference was that I didn't want to let others in on my code. I preferred the visual aesthetics to speak for themselves, unaware of the fact that later on I would find for myself that, amidst the breadth of material and medium that I work with, relying on aesthetics is a wobbly and inconsistent base to stand on that doesn't grant my practice the conceptual throughline it deserves. And not to mention, the "aesthetic" I'm referring to is largely dependent on being othered in school, life, and globally.

I say all that because I want to explain why I found Coral Dictionary so successful as a study and an artwork. It's honest in its appearance: a work in progress, an unfinished project, a language in the midst of being grown. I am first drawn to understanding it as I would any other language. It is a purely visual/written language always accompanied by a verbal or written translation. The characters exist to carry words, each coral figure translating to one complete word or concept in English, Malay, and Mandarin. Meaning is assigned to corals based on shape, texture, or other visual clues. Many of the corals have multiple meanings that allude to the same concept but can encompass many words. Trying to interpret this as a script is very reflective of translation as an act of creation.

How these works were displayed made a huge difference in my experience with them. The last show I saw with these types of glass cases was the Ruth Asawa retrospective. (Peering down at her drawings, I felt like I was witnessing the development of something important and elemental.) I think of this fun image that charts the transformation from Sumerian representational glyphs to an Assyrian alphabet.( Source )

I can't help but to think of the project functionally. Coral Dictionary is an attempt at rewiring visual communication. It acts as a vessel to reimagine reading and understanding. In trying to read these sentences, I have to force myself to let go of grammatical constraints, conjugation, sentence structuring, and just acquire meaning from concepts placed next to each other. It is just like when I'm reading a sentence in Farsi that is slightly complicated for my proficiency level: I have to prioritize understanding the whole before getting into the relationships within.

"Language is the soul of a nation."

Yuchan sourced many of these sample sentences from a tri-lingual dictionary they found while in Malaysia. They found the sentences were culturally informed and reflective of the political climate in the country. I was reminded of this Farsi-English dictionary that Michelle found for me in Vancouver. I truly wonder what informed this one.

Some other standouts in Greater New York:

Upon Leaving the White Dust (go go she and not come back said go and dont come back), 2018/2025.

Cici Wu's collaboration with the estate of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, displaying fragments of archival materials that she left behind in progress.

A photo installation by Farah Al Qasimi that coincidentally shares a room with Coral Dictionary.

Counterdoses for the Home, 2026.

A wonderful puppet-y diorama installation by Tom Thayer.

Something I'm quite thrilled about lately is my garden. Here's where I'm at currently: I have two tomatoes in the garden bed, surrounded by some mint and rosemary to hopefully ward off bugs and rats. Three more are in buckets nearby. Also I have cilantro going too.

I'll end here, and I will write again after I return from 2 weeks at Penland School of Craft. Until next time!