You Were Born With Sad Eyes

You Were Born With Sad Eyes is a dance-sound virtual reality (VR) artwork that underscores the emotive nature of movement by extracting dance and gestures from my body and superimposing them onto female digital robot avatars. The work alternates between movement and stillness, accompanied by a haunting, glitched soundscape. As it unfolds, some robots clip or collapse into themselves; others remain frozen mid-gesture or lie fragmented on the floor. The soundscape continues even after the movement ceases, reinforcing a state of unresolved emotion. Subtle morbid humor emerges against a backdrop of loss, exhaustion, disembodiment, grief, and failure.

Through movement and glitches within the VR space, the work experiments with how the artist can express herself when her body fails her—and disappears entirely from the composition. It continues my engagement with (mis)representations of femininity, irrationality (“mental illness”), and their intertwined nature, as well as the psychosomatic—foregrounded in the simultaneous absence and presence of the artist’s body. Though the artist's body¾my body¾is notably absent, her movement, infused with emotion, memory, and intention, remains. In this way, the work reveals how internal mental states are embedded within idiosyncratic movement itself. The viewer is invited to reflect on a state in which the body is absent, yet its echoes remain (not unlike grieving the loss of a loved one). The statement “you were born with sad eyes” is something my mother has said to me throughout the years. To her, my eyes disclosed a knowledge of a pain that was yet to come. This piece in a sense touches on the pain after it has already arrived.