From the Department of Social Customs (1997)

From the Department of Social Customs were a series of three life sized ceramic Cheong Sam (a traditional Chinese dress for women) made from earthenware. The dresses were purposely made in an unwearable material of raku earthenware to represent my own feelings of dislocation towards my upbringing in Australia and being of Cantonese/Chinese heritage.

I created three of these dresses to represent one for myself and my two older sisters, to represent the weight of roles we are to undertake. The dresses are a metaphor for the cultural expectations from my family and community in how I should behave as a Chinese person, even though I was brought up in Australia in a very different culture and the internal conflict I have felt over the years.

I created the sculptures as antique objects to represent the traditional values and expectations of a past era, thus showing the displacement and the role in relation to my contemporary body. The dresses act as a metaphor for the discomfort I felt as a younger women, attempting to find my own independent identity in Australian society. 

From the department of social customs was exhibited in the Rewedged exhibition, Global Gallery, Paddington (1997) (see image left), the Millennium Hotel, Kings Cross, Sydney (1998) and was featured on the cover of Hazel Clark's publication ‘The Cheongsam’ (1998) on Chinese dress published by Oxford University Press (see cover above).