01 I Rise Into The Cool Skies

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I Rise Into The Cool Skies, 2026

Medium: Hardcover book with jeans as cover; print on polyester film; stereo audio

Dimensions: Book: 3 × 3 ×1/2" (7.6 × 7.6 × 1.2 cm); print: 51 × 36 " (129.5 × 91.4 cm); audio: 58 seconds; overall installation dimensions vary

I Rise Into The Cool Skies is my first installation project at RISD. Titled by a line from Frank O’Hara’s poem “In Memory Of My Feelings,” the project examines how both text and photographs fail to document impressions (soon-to-be memories). Such memories cease to carry the signified to the person who bears them when they materialize as characters. As Solnit has put it, “I gave it away.” The photographs are the same, belying the vivid and lively people in them despite the photographer’s incentive to capture them as alive as possible, which usually ends up as funerals. Perhaps devices as intangible as music might mediate this futile endeavor. It is like memories, carrying that inevitable and one-direction linearity of time in which the later frequencies overpower the previous ones, while contradictorily, they only make sense provided the context established upon the previous ones. I, then, translated my classmates’ names and composed a short piece of music accompanying the book.

Thanks to my wonderful classmates, and especially Jane, who helped me with arranging the space for this gallery (is it?) view; thanks to Professor Hirst, who provided the opportunity to make this possible.

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