About This Project

This collection of works titled “an ear is an heirloom”  is an ongoing research project processing the recent passing of my grandma, Helen Wong, by invoking a childhood memory of nicknaming her earlobes “pillow” due to their tactile softness. Locating the critical role of the ear in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) as a microcosm that maps the entire body and therefore a direct pathway to holistic treatment, I engage with the radical histories of auricular (ear) acupuncture as practiced by the Black Panthers and the Young Lords in the 1970’s, as well as acupuncture and TCM’s roots as land-based modes of healing. Tracing both the connection and disconnection between personal family lineages and wider histories of community resistance, these works live in the thick of finding medicine to tend to chronic illness, diasporic motion sickness, and the ruptures of grief. Through recycling and re-imagining my grandma’s everyday objects as family artifacts and re-embodying the ways she expressed care through sewing and her job as a labour & delivery nurse, my crooked stitches sew the seams of intergenerational intimacies.