MR

ARTIST PORTFOLIO // INSTALLATIONS

Transaction Denied

Multi-media site-specific installation, 2019 - 2023
In collaboration with Xena Ni

Transaction Denied tells the story of thousands of people seeking help paying for food in our nation’s capitol.

Reflecting on a troubled $50 million computer upgrade to DC’s food assistance program (also known as SNAP) that left thousands without access to their benefits,Transaction Denied invites us to ask our government to do better.

The piece pairs cascades of familiar objects, like receipts and manila folders, with audio of human stories lost amidst systemic failures. The result is an immersive experience that calls into question how much we scrutinize people struggling to put food on their tables, and how little we understand about how our government is failing them.

On display at:

• Fuller Craft Museum
  Brockton, Massachusetts, 2022-23

• Ohio Craft Museum
  Columbus, Ohio, 2022

• Contemporary Craft
  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2021-22

• Bread for the City
  Washington, DC, 2019

• Umbrella
  Washington, DC, 2019

Press:

• Artists Find Creative Ways to Raise Food Insecurity Awareness, Hyperallergic

• When Tech Makes Food Insecurity Worse, Bloomberg

• Fuller Craft Museum Offers ‘Food Justice’ For Thought, Boston Globe

• Fuller Craft explores food insecurity through art in new exhibit, WBUR

• Legal Aid’s Food Stamps Lawsuit Inspires Art Installation, Legal Aid DC

Tempo

Multi-media installation, February 2019
In collaboration with Xena Ni and Eric Chiu

Tempo shows the scale, emotions, and rhythm of one day of New Yorkers’ interactions with city government.

New York City is home to nearly 9 million and its government is a clearinghouse of 9 million peoples’ worth of transactions, from heart-filling to life shattering. Hidden in city records are our emotional valences: hundreds of millions of dreams pursued, dreams deferred, hearts broken, sighs of relief. Very first breaths and very last. It’s hard to see and feel these experiences through numbers alone.

Visitors hear a slice of the thousands of stories embedded in datasets recording births, SNAP cases, and scheduled evictions. The frequency of these transactions and their total numbers is visualized through masses of everyday objects and use of pulsing light. Tempo invites visitors to get close-in, to meet the lives and the stories and the nuance beyond what any number is able to tell us.

Tempo was on display at the 2019 Data through Design exhibit hosted at the New Lab.