Look long enough at a koi and the boundaries of stillness begin to dissolve. A Thousand Koi is a metaphoric symbology of what goes unsaid. In many Asian and diaspora communities, endurance is praised and struggle stays quiet, and the cost of appearing composed is rarely named. The series does not set out to explain that silence; it gives it color and form. I work in the register of classical Chinese ink painting, where the empty field and the boneless stroke carry as much as the mark, and in the register of Abstract Expressionism, where color is feeling before it is form. Made in ponds across Northern and Southern California, the work carries inherited symbols into new water. What surfaces is not a document but a reckoning made tender: an invitation to feel first, and to let understanding come after.

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