In a mammoth cocoon

What will we dream?

How will we mend?

Will we transform?

The bloody battles we fight.

The wars within ourselves.

A death kingdom

A death nation

A death marriage

When will we say farewell?

Who will sing our lullabies?

Open your hearts in remembrance of Black and Asian lives that have been taken tragically. Inside this pandemic cocoon, let us honor our histories, the living, the dead, the butterfly migrators, and celebrate how we will transform. Black and Asian allyship.

“Weaving Cocoons; Colliding Monarchs” was first performed in McKinley Park with Ysaye Alma, Legend Kind, Sungjae Lee, and Cristal Sabbagh. We repeated this four times to a six-minute piece of music titled “Forgive” by Wild Anima.

Nestled in the center of a circle of wooded stumps and surrounding trees, were three Black bodies (Ysaye Alma, Legend Kind, and Cristal Sabbagh) wrapped in white gauze fabric symbolizing a chrysalis. Sungjae Lee and I (two Asian bodies) slowly circle the chrysalis with care and protection. As we circle, Ysaye, Legend, and Cristal slowly emerge from the fabric as Sungjae and I gently open milkweed pods as the milkweed fluff gently wafts through the air. Towards the end, we gently merge together, uniting, connecting.

Five weeks later, I partner with each performer one-on-one for a 90-minute durational performance at a different park every Saturday for the month of August.

In these performances, we highlighted eighteen Black and Asian lives that have been taken due to hate by displaying their photos on bridges or on sculptures and whispering their individual stories to viewers through a long cardboard tube into their ear. Each performance also featured the song “Forgive” by Wild Anima, the fabric chrysalis, milkweed fluff and monarch butterfly wings, and was also live-streamed.