Consider The Language

  Võ uses pigeons—creatures associated with movement and marginality—to visualize freedom as something conditional and paused. By freezing flight within a cultivated “garden,” the work exposes how institutions aestheticize mobility while quietly controlling it.~(ChatGPT)  That said, I've never been someone who finds art like this mind-boggling or life-changing. To me, it’s just art that is sometimes meaningful, sometimes over-interpreted. No matter how much someone tries to convince me, I still can't accept why the Mona Lisa is valued at anywhere between $870 million and $1 billion. I understand its historical importance and Da Vinci's revolutionary techniques—like the illusion of moving eyes—but the price still feels inflated by reputation more than substance. Also, I heard  an argument that the  Mona Lisa  is so popular because it was  stolen from the  Louvre Museum  in 1911. With that in mind, I tried connecting that skepticism to Danh Võ's ...

It has been exactly two years, one month, and sixteen days since I moved from India to the USA. My first day as a freshman still feels like yesterday. My dad’s friend dropped my dad and me off at school, and I remember my dad taking like 20 pictures of me, which was kind of sweet and sour at the same time.  It’s amusing to me h ow I didn’t just change my lifestyle after immigrating; instead, I slowly grew into a whole new person. And the funny part is, during this process of discovering my identity, my parents seemed to almost lose theirs. By “losing their identity,” I don’t mean changing their names or bleaching their hair. I mean the dramatic change in their attitude toward my academic performance. I’m writing this after reading Ethan’s blog (shoutout to Ethan), and honestly, we share more similarities than differences in our childhoods. I used to carry this pit-in-my-stomach feeling that I couldn’t shake: Why do my parents never say “I love you, son,” or “I’m proud of you,” or a...