Vox Lumina - works in progress

An experimental opera & installation
With the support of a 2024-25 Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition, I am currently developing Vox Lumina, an intermedia opera and installation which will premiere in January 2027, presented in San Francisco by Other Minds. Drawing upon my own experiences as a queer Chinese American, this work aims to shed light on the shadow qualities of marginalized identities that we hold within us. The work will be a poetic-philosophical exploration of how race and gender constructs influence us and how we might reimagine the self from a holistic perspective as multitudinous and interconnected. Vox Lumina will be realized both as a live concert performance and as an “exploded opera” in the form of an installation combining sculpture, video projections, visual art, and musical composition.

This opera will expand the idea of what a song form can be and include voice, chamber and choral music, video, alternative tunings, and intermedia installations. The live performance will take shape as an hour-long opera and will include Del Sol string quartet, Radiance Vocal Ensemble directed by Anne Hege (a part of Peninsula Women’s Chorus), vocalist Roco Córdova, percussionist Haruka Fujii, and myself. The installation version will be presented in a separate gallery space. Each song in the opera will inhabit part of the physical space such that a viewer/listener could traverse through the gallery in their own time and experience the trajectory of the pieces in sonic and physical forms. My hope is that Vox Lumina will tap into universal experiences for people of all backgrounds to question the ways in which we all inhabit a multitude of spaces and perceive each other, within or outside of our own self-defined tribes.

Below are samples of works-in-progress of the piece, created with the support of a month long artist residency at Kinosaito Art Center in Verplanck, New York from April 9 - May 11, 2025. (Click on images to enlarge)

Row 1
Studies in scenography; use of color and projections in an architectural space

Row 2
Study: Hands
Holding hands as an act of radical courage. As a queer woman, I often feel a magnetic energy field when holding hands of my beloved in public, both attracting and pushing back; uncertain of potential danger, judgement, or simply my own internalized oppression. I’m developing the idea of a ‘video tapestry’ of hands to focus on and celebrate the energy of this gesture. The hands filmed for this sketch are of former Kinosaito artists Taína Larot and her partner Kia LaBeija, who was born HIV positive. This tapestry could be expanded to included many different hands of people who have felt marginalized in their unions as well as mixed materials including fabric, paper, and found materials.

Row 3
Study: Everybody Nose
This piece stems from the experience of being a child and told to pinch and massage the bridge of my nose so it would get bigger and look more ‘Caucasian’. It explores the way in which idealized ‘Western’ beauty pervades our culture, and aims to reveal the hidden stories our noses tell us about ourselves and our values. These casts were made from community members at Kinosaito Art Center. Their stories were projected as animated writing which played forward and in reverse, writing and ‘unwriting’ these histories. This piece will also contain audio recordings of people singing through their noses.

Row 4
Open Studios event at Kinosaito, illuminated noses, costume sketch with projected light

Performance with flutist Jane Rigler at Kinosaito Open Studios, May 10, 2025

Sculptural study for Hands Triptych