“Rejection, as an artist, is not unfamiliar, but this one lingered. It felt nostalgic, like being quieted, like being told to stay in place. It surfaced a self consciousness I thought I had outgrown, a reminder of what it means to not quite fit. Unalienable But Excluded was created in response to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, using that milestone as a lens to examine a history shaped as much by omission as by declaration. Thirteen closed eyed facial imprints reference the original colonies, bodies present and foundational, yet unseen. Text from founding documents and constitutional amendments repeats and fragments across the surface. Painted flags shift and dissolve. The Philippine flag fades, the Chinese flag morphs toward the American, while the American flag itself remains unfinished, an unstable symbol of belonging. The work operates as both a collective reflection and a self portrait, shaped by my experience as the child of immigrants, navigating identities that feel increasingly precarious in today’s political climate. Porcelain slip and red stoneware mirror one another materially, with refinement and rawness pointing to the extractive costs embedded in both process and survival. Fractured edges trace the persistent distance between democratic ideals and lived realities. In its rejection, the work echoes its own premise, the ongoing exclusion of voices that challenge the dominant narrative. What remains is not resolution, but insistence, the act of making, of speaking, of refusing to disappear.”