Artist Statement

Welcome to the World of Microaggression Givers: Where Social Justice Has Been Fixed is an art-based autoethnographic virtual reality installation that is based on my research regarding everyday racism instances and their impacts on mental health. This project took three years to research alongside navigating grad school. In this time, I have developed a new skill in sculpting designed characters digitally and virtual reality (VR) spaces. I chose VR as a medium for this project to create what I see in this world and promote empathy and validation among viewers. VR is the ideal medium for this project since it can invite users to a new world. By putting them in the first-person point of view, users can indirectly experience the person living in the virtual world.

My hope for this project is, having viewers in my space to “see” and “feel” what it is like to be living in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic as an international Asian student. This project is rooted in my own definition of social justice — social justice is forming a community that constantly processes, addresses, and discusses social problems together, and includes everyone in the conversation.