My practice centers around sustainability, connection to land, heritage, and vulnerability. As a mixed Navajo and Chinese woman, reconnecting to my indigeneity has been an important part of my life and art practice. I moved to my ancestral lands for a year before London, which was an inspiring time for me as I learned more about my Navajo culture and immersed myself in the landscapes. While living in New Mexico I experimented with collecting natural materials such as clays, plants, and wool to use as dyes, paints, and fiber. These practices allow me to connect to my culture and embody resilience, as I am embracing the culture that was nearly stripped from my ancestors. When I forage my materials, it allows me to interact with my environment and infuse that essence into my work in a really intimate way. I’ve continued to explore this connection to material and place, incorporating traditional textiles and foraging for found materials in the streets of London. Through sourced materials I was able to make unexpected visual links between my personal experiences. Materials can hold so many stories and power, materials are a way to connect to a place, a memory, a feeling, and exploring these potentials motivates my practice. I have a very tactile relationship to design, and I like developing through hands-on processes. For this reason, knit and crochet are some of my favorite textile techniques to create with. The intuitive and spontaneous tendencies of this way of making inspire me. There is a fluidity, and skin-like quality to these mediums that attracts me as I continually am influenced by the body and the way textiles interact with the human form.