My Mother’s Success Is Like Breath
2021. Performance, Photographic series.
“Female success has always been measured by male criteria” (Halberstam, 2018).
Under the dominant neoliberal regime, women and other marginalized individuals are systematically excluded from spaces of success and privilege. From my experience, I see how my mother’s daily efforts and achievements go unnoticed by society because they are tied to caregiving and the home.
For this piece, I use a magnifying mirror to whisper the word “success” repeatedly until my breath clouds the surface. I then capture this fleeting trace with acetate—a symbolic and poetic attempt to hold onto the success that always slips away.
Through this work, I intend to expose how neoliberal success functions as a hollow ideal, built on individualism and an exhausting “work harder” culture that erases the value of collective care and invisible labor. Likewise, this piece vindicates failure and other alternative ways of experiencing success—those found in the ephemeral, the immeasurable, and the unrecognized—which are central to queer and transfeminist narratives of resistance.
Finally, it honors my mother, whose endless care and quiet sacrifices have allowed me to pursue my own fleeting moments of success.
