Repatriated, a phantom and a dream
Ink on washi paper accordion handbound with fabric
2025
15x10.75"
The world's earliest dated printed book is a Chinese copy of the Diamond Sutra, a sacred Mahayana text made in 868 CE and kept in the Mogao Library Cave near Dunhuang, an outpost on the Silk Road. The book is currently held at the British Library, after archeologist Sir Aurel Stein smuggled away thousands of manuscripts in 1907.
This is my reimagined Diamond Sutra, using modern printing and ink calligraphy on a handmade book, with fragile pages unfolding as unruly as cultures which can never be owned:
"So you should view this fleeting world—
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream."
Cosmic Abolition
Ink and Chinese pigments on xuan paper accordion
2024
11x8”
Studies of the Dunhuang Mogao cave paintings, from a week in the Gobi Desert last April.
Jo$$ Reparations
Spirit money, ink, charcoal and cinnabar on xuan paper accordion
24 page karmic checkbook, 17.75x12.5”
2024
A history of reparations from 1783 to 2024 paid by the U.S. government, states, cities, religious institutions, universities, corporations and communities. Illustrated as a karmic accouting book and timeline using joss paper ghost bills, a spirit currency in Buddhist and Taoist practice burnt as offering to ancestors in the afterlife.
Documentation by Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik in Social Practice at California College of the Arts
True Forms
Ink on xuan paper accordion
2024
8x11”
Studies of Ming dynasty medical manuals, star charts and anatomy diagrams, which informed traditional Chinese medicine visualizations of the body as interconnected with nature, like a web without a weaver. Made during visits to a community hospital where my grandfather and his father spent their lives practicing.
Combat Literature
Ink and Chinese pigments on xuan paper accordion
2024
Fanon called for “combat literature” that galvanizes the people, in their struggle for liberation, to develop a new language and new humanity. Using ink and paper from my grandparents’ hometown, I am honoring the right to protest; against the same technologies of empire in the US, China, Israel; lineages of resistance, from student protests against the Vietnam War at Kent State, where I was born, to mobilizations for Gaza in the Bay Area and Stanford. Power to Palestinian resistance and our interconnected movements until the day Palestine is free
Fibrosis
2023
Vellum, washi and photo paper handbound with japanese stab binding
Fibrosis is a pathological process of scarring—an inflammatory response to injury. this book attempts to trace the chronic wounds of geopolitical tensions on the chinese american body. in the absence of a cure, how do we protect each other from injury, imagine ways of repair?
Little book of yokai
2023
Stab-bound mulberry paper, based on Hokusai’s monsters