Golden City City

The “GOOD AS GOLD” series began with a simple but urgent question: When new technology emerges, we discard the old. But what is the true value of these discarded objects? Are they merely garbage? My work seeks to challenge this linear perception of value. By collecting e-waste from landfills such as motherboards, memory chips, and graphic cards and transforming them into artworks like “Golden City”, I aim to provoke a deeper conversation about consumption, memory, and ecological responsibility. The very act of recontextualizing these components into a city-like structure invites viewers to see not waste, but a landscape of latent meaning a “golden life” reborn from neglect.

My obsession with gold runs deep. I’ve always been drawn to anything gold even the gold teeth popular in American hip-hop culture fascinate me. During my studies at Parsons School of Design, I created a series of works centered around this color. Some might call it "materialism," implying a fixation on monetary value. But to me, value has never been about price; it’s about what you care about. Something has value if you cherish it; if you don’t, no price tag can bestow it. An expensive handbag, for instance, holds far less value to me than the potential to make people pause and reflect. I chose gold precisely to hijack its cultural power to make people stop and look at what they normally disregard. By gifting these abandoned fragments a golden skin, I am not merely beautifying trash I am performing a kind of visual alchemy. The coating acts as a metaphor for hidden potential: what society discards, art can elevate. In “Golden City”, “Golden Cluster”, and “Golden State”, the gold surface becomes a mirror reflecting our own relationship with value questioning why we dismiss these intricate, once-precious objects. It’s an aesthetic gesture that whispers: What if everything we throw away still shines? My goal is to make e-waste impossible to ignore, to hold the viewer’s attention for just one minute longer, and direct that attention toward the value of our environment.

The fundamental challenge began with sourcing the materials themselves a surprisingly difficult process. Beyond my own discarded devices, which are far from sufficient for an art installation, I had no idea where to start. In New York, after a long search, I located a repository in Flushing near an airport a public storage area where discarded electronics, from home appliances to mobile phones, were temporarily held. Like a recycling bin that might be emptied weekly or even bi-weekly, this place accumulated electronic refuse until collection. There, with a friend, I salvaged a cardboard box of circuit boards before they were hauled away. This act of collection itself was fraught with difficulty, compounded by the strict regulations governing electronic waste globally. These regulations, which often prohibit individuals from shipping or transporting e-waste, continue to pose significant challenges even today. Whenever “Golden City” is invited to exhibit overseas, we face a maze of complex customs and approval procedures. The sheer volume of electronic components and chips within the installation often leads to failed approvals, forcing us to abandon plans for physical exhibitions unless I can travel to the host country to create a site-specific version. This reality underscores that the obstacles are not merely technical but systemic. The immediate sensory challenge was also visceral. Driving back with that box filled my car, and then my apartment, with a strange, persistent odor of e-waste. Carrying the box up to my studio, passersby would cover their noses, while I, dressed in high fashion, held the very source of that smell a moment of profound irony. Technically, working with these reclaimed electronics was an exercise in empathy. Integrating Arduino and lighting meant wrestling with circuits never designed to be part of an artistic whole, troubleshooting unstable connections and signal interference. Yet these challenges became part of the concept: the flickering lights in “Golden City” mimic the “life” still present in these dormant materials, their technical fragility echoing the environmental and regulatory fragility we so often confront.