Gentleness (2026)
Exhibition at MAG Galleries in San Francisco, July 3 - Aug 2, 2026
Gentleness has taken shape from a deep reflection on the caring thread of motherhood between three generations: my mother, myself, and my daughter. The artworks in this series are inspired by my mother’s drawings, who died by suicide in 2011. I created wood sculptures in which I carved my mother’s patterns, and then printed them on washi paper. For me, the printing process is representative for the imprint our parents leave on us, and how we carry their memory in our lives. In the prints, my mother’s drawings are the blank spaces that symbolize her absence.
One of the artworks in the exhibition grows with the shared thoughts and stories I receive from others - a difficult feeling, or a weight they or someone close to them carries. I transcribe these words into the artwork with the purpose of building more empathy around mental health. You can find out more and submit your words for the artwork here.
Through Gentleness, I hope to create a space for people to openly speak about mental health and the stigma surrounding suicide. It is my wish that people like my mother can be remembered and honored for who they were as a person, and not only for how they died. I have partnered with the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention on how to guide my exhibition towards a meaningful, hopeful conversation.
Pleasr scroll below to find the texts that are available to read on the exhibition walls.
24 x 30 inches
| Salvaged wood (bubinga, Douglas fir, mahogany, teak, walnut, redwood, pine, oak, ash) and oil on wood panel |
24 x 30 inches
32 x 32 inches
Salvaged wood (Douglas fir, teak, redwood, pine, oak, ash, mahogany, poplar) and oil on wood panel
32 x 32 inches
Oil based ink and gouache on okawara paper
22 x 30 inches
Salvaged wood (tigerwood, bubinga, teak, walnut, sapele, redwood, ash, Douglas fir, maple, oak) and oil on wood panel
22 x 30 inches
Oil based ink on gampi paper, mounted on wood panel
22 x 30 inches
Salvaged wood (teak, walnut, Douglas fir, bubinga, mahogany, cherry, maple, oak, sapele) and oil on wood panel
22 x 30 inches
Oil based ink on gampi paper, mounted on wood panel
22 x 30
Salvaged wood (Doglas fir, redwood, oak, maple, walnut, teak, ash) and oil on wood panel
22 x 30
Oil based ink on gampi paper, mounted on wood panel
22 x 30
Salvaged wood (walnut, teak, mahogany, redwood, oak, maple, Douglas fir) and oil on wood panel
22 x 30
Oil based ink on okawara paper, mounted on wood panel
12 x 16 inches
Salvaged wood (Douglas fir, walnut, cherry, oak, maple, bubinga, redwood) and oil on wood panel
12 x 16 inches
Oil based ink and gouache on gampi paper
12 x 16 inches
Salvaged wood (redwood, Douglas fir, oak, ash, mahongany) and oil on wood panel
12 x 16 inches
Oil based ink on gampi paper, mounted on wood panel
24 x 36 inches
Ink on okawara paper, mounted on wood panel
For the window artwork, I transcribed excerpts from “On Being Ill” by Virginia Wolf. In this beautiful essay, she talks about how illness radically alters perception and consciousness, arguing that despite being a universal human experience, it has been strangely neglected as a subject in literature. Virginia Wolf took her own life in March 1941, amid a severe depressive relapse and the strains of World War II.
The following pages were written to accompanythe artworks in the Gentleness exhibition.
Introduction
Gentleness has taken shape from a deep reflection on the thread of care passed between three generations of mothers: my mother, myself, and my daughter. The works were initially inspired by geometric shapes I drew for my newborn, when her developing sight could only perceive bold, high-contrast shapes. These drawings reminded me of the decorative patterns my mother drew in blue and black ink throughout her life.
My mother died by suicide unexpectedly in 2011.
The first months of my daughter's life were a quiet time of contemplation for me, remembering my mother and wishing I could talk to her. This turned into an imagined intergenerational collaboration, in which I carved my mother's geometric patterns into my wood compositions, tracing a felt absence.
I have spent a lot of time reckoning with my mother's death. Working with her drawings has helped me transform the grief I have silently carried into visual, physical objects. The work has helped me remember who she was while she was alive, and has given her a voice she never claimed for herself. My mother was, above all, a very gentle person.
The texts accompanying the artworks in this exhibition are meant to be conversation openings. They don't paint a complete picture, but are ideas and facts that resonated with me during my research on the topic of suicide. My hope is that through this exhibition, some of the stigma and silence around suicide can be undone.
History of Suicide: Cultural and Social Perspectives
Views on suicide have varied across cultures and shifted over time, shaped by religion, law, medicine, and social values. Tracing this history helps explain how stigma took hold — and how it might be undone.
Attitudes in the ancient world were mixed. In Ancient Greece, suicide was seen less as a private tragedy and more as a breach of duty to the gods, to reason, or to the community. A more permissive strand ran through Greek and Roman Stoicism, where a chosen death could be seen as a reasonable and even honorable response to difficult circumstances. Elsewhere, particular traditions gave suicide specific meaning: in Japan, ritual suicide became bound up with honor and the avoidance of disgrace.
In Christian Europe, condemnation hardened over centuries. Early church authorities denied funeral rites to suicides, and by the Middle Ages theologians had framed the act as a grave sin. Civil law followed: France's 1670 Criminal Ordinance codified this, subjecting the body to public desecration, stripping families of property and punishing survivors alongside the dead. Such laws proved slow to unwind — France decriminalized suicide in 1791, while in England and Wales it remained a crime until 1961, within living memory.
Beginning in the Enlightenment and consolidating through the nineteenth century, a different understanding took shape: that suicide could be a symptom of illness and suffering rather than a crime or a sin. It is a shift still underway. The language itself carries the older weight — the word "suicide" only entered English in the seventeenth century, replacing "self-murder." The language is also shifting away from the term “committed” suicide, since this carries the implication of a crime.
History shapes how we speak about this, and how often we stay silent. Moving toward prevention, support, and open conversation means meeting suffering with empathy rather than shame.
The Scale
Every year, an estimated 740,000 people take their own lives, and many more attempt suicide — roughly one death every 43 seconds. The true figure is likely higher, families sometimes concealing a cause of death due to the stigma, and deaths by overdose or poisoning being recorded as accidental. Fewer than one in four people leave a note behind, and studies suggest that underreporting is greatest in exactly the places where suicide carries the most shame.
Worldwide, suicide claims more lives than homicide and war combined. Yet studies suggest that somewhere between half and two-thirds of people experiencing suicidal thoughts never seek professional help, and many tell no one at all. Shame, fear of judgment, and worry about hospitalization or losing independence all keep people silent.The numbers vary sharply by age, gender, region, and income. Globally, older adults have among the highest suicide rates, while for young people suicide is one of the leading causes of death.
In the Western world, men die by suicide three to four times more often than women. Suicide attempts are between two and four times more frequent among women. Researchers partly attribute this difference to men using more lethal means to end their lives.
Suicide reaches more people than many realize — but prevention and support are possible. Reducing stigma means building spaces where people can talk about mental health without fear of judgment, so that reaching out feels safe. Statistics matter for understanding the scale, but they never tell the whole story. Mental health struggles can touch anyone. Asking for help is a sign of strength, and every person deserves compassion, support, and hope.
Suicide Myths
Misinformation about suicide often stops people from stepping in when it matters most. Understanding the facts behind these myths can save lives.
One of the most persistent myths is that asking someone about suicide will plant the idea in their mind. Research consistently shows the opposite: asking directly does not increase suicidal thoughts or behavior. More often it brings relief — a sign that someone has noticed, and is willing to talk about it openly.
Many also believe that people who talk about suicide are just seeking attention. In reality, talking about it is a warning sign, not a bluff. Even when a behavior looks like "attention-seeking," it reflects real distress and limited tools for expressing that pain. Warning signs are often present but easy to miss — clearer in hindsight than in the moment. Not seeing them is not a failure; suicide is not always foreseeable.
There's also a belief that once someone has made up their mind, nothing can be done. But suicidal crises are usually temporary. Most people in that state are deeply ambivalent — they don't necessarily want to die, they only want the pain to stop. Helping someone through the acute crisis, and putting distance between them and the moment, sharply improves their long-term chances.
Together, these myths paint suicide as sudden and unpreventable. More often it is shaped by a temporary, survivable crisis, and eased by connection and care. Every mention deserves attention, not dismissal. Trading assumption for understanding is often the first, most hopeful step toward reaching someone who needs it.
Stigma: Breaking the Silence
When my mother disappeared leaving a short note behind, the shock and confusion reached everyone around us. People worried and tried to help find her however they could. But once it became clear that she had taken her own life, much of that support curdled into a heavy silence. Conversations were happening, just rarely in front of us. People didn't know what to say. Many were grieving in their own way, with some close friends cutting off communication with us altogether.
Losing her this way, I learned that suicide is a death with repercussions unlike any other. Families often feel embarrassed or ashamed of how their person died. They don't want others to think less of someone they loved. Sociologist Erving Goffman gave this a name in 1963: courtesy stigma — the way shame attached to one person spreads to those close to them, so that we, too, are quietly judged. Public feeling about suicide tends to look for a failure somewhere, and the search often stops at the family. That judgment, spoken or not, does something particular: it keeps us from grieving in the company of others — which is the only way grief actually moves.
But stigma is not permanent and it can be shifted. For most of the last century, abortion sat almost exactly where suicide sits now — hidden, condemned, unspeakable. Women who had abortions risked their lives in the process, and the secrecy only deepened the trauma. With the slow reframing away from moral failure, abortion didn't become casual or unserious, but it became speakable. Once something can be openly talked about, the isolation breaks, support becomes possible, and grief and complexity can be worked through in relationship instead of in hiding.