Care Labels, 2026, textile care labels and inkjet prints on paper

How do we learn to care? In what ways might identities–and the ways things are labeled–offer pathways towards both care and erasure? What can we learn when we retrace these tracks through our familial and collective lineages?

Care Labels is an exploration into my maternal great-grandmother’s identities (Chinese, immigrant, woman, orphan, mother, widow, laundry business owner), the ways she showed care (washing clothes, cooking meals, cleaning house) and the ways she was cared for (by her sons in her old age). 

This project consists of miniature hand weavings made from my garments’ care labels and photographs of my great-grandmother. As these slivers weave over and under one another, Care Labels exposes the complementary and contradictory relationship between care and identity. While labels such as “Chinese” and “woman” can help us learn how to care for someone, they also serve as forms of erasure, obscuring the totality of that person’s multifaceted and evolving needs. Read in the other direction, however, this work suggests that truly seeing someone–working hard to make out their image–can render the labels irrelevant, creating alternate routes towards care and knowing.