Massage Baby! (2025) is an ongoing project that began as my MFA thesis work at Columbia University and now serves as the foundation for a broader, cross-cultural investigation. The original version is a two-channel video installation centered on Chinese female massage workers in Flushing, Queens. Through staged interviews, observational footage, and embodied performance, the work explores how gendered labor is visualized, eroticized, and narrativized—particularly within the diasporic Chinese community.

The thesis installation presented two perspectives: one from the point of view of “Coco,” a fictionalized massage worker performed by myself, and one from the observing lens of the filmmaker. Together, they expose the unstable boundary between documentary and fiction, intimacy and performance, and power and care. The work also questions how filmmakers and audiences alike engage with marginalized women’s stories—whether as spectators, collaborators, or voyeurs.