8.5" x 11"​​​​​​

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The work, ‘BYOH’, or ‘Build-Your-Own Home’ reflects a collection of traditional Chinese courtyard houses, resembling the one my father told me his family possessed pre-expropriation. After the Communist government first removed the Kuomintang, the first of their actions for reform was expropriation. Although the practice was intended to properly redistribute wealth from the extremely rich to peasants, my great-grandfather, who was a bamboo craftsman, had built up the funds for our family home through, and only through, his practice. Although the government claimed it with the promise of returning the home in two years, it was never returned. Additionally, shortly after, the government banned his primary form of trade, as his work in the crafts resembled what they deemed Old Culture.

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As my great-grandfather was a craftsman who used commonplace bamboo, I turned to my own readily available tools (paper) to design a worksheet with a simplified version of his house that could be assembled through cutting, gluing, and placing the walls together to eventually make a series of courtyard homes, and invited the public to build their own using these sheets as well. Each of these carefully-crafted homes were then taken by me and repositioned under a puppet clutching an auction plate. For me, this work explored the complications of such an all-encompassing policy on my family history– despite the best (or worst) of intentions, the negative consequences have had decades of impact.