DEFINITION (I)

[sold at auction with proceeds going to Hong Kong Marriage Equality]

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I decided to make the insistent and vehement thick brush stroke on top of the layered red I was working on, on a day that I felt quite upset at something sexist: being called by a name that is not my own, which some sections of society love to do to women who dare to keep their own names after they get married.

I’ve been thinking about why other people’s definitions of me bother me so much for as long as I remember.

I was first introduced to the brilliance of Audre Lorde through her essay “The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House.” Soon after, I found myself devouring as many of her words as I could find.

In 1982, she delivered an address at Harvard, which contains this bit:

“…I learned that if I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive. My poetry, my life, my work, my energies for struggle were not acceptable unless I pretended to match somebody else’s norm.”

She reminds me to keep my insistence on my own definitions instead of agreeing to others’ versions, not just on the name matter, but on any number of other important things.

30h x 30w x 0.75d (inches); acrylic, rattan, and paper on wood-backed canvas