Crying Makes A Girl Ugly is a response to the countless moments I have been scolded or mocked for shedding tears. The video juxtaposes footage of me knitting cheerful kaomoji with anime and manga excerpts of girls crying. It repositions crying as a radical form of self-care vis-à-vis the notion that crying is a sign of weakness and irrationality. Sadness, anger, jealousy, regret, happiness, eros, despair, relief, pain, frustration…..Crying validates all those emotions, it is life-affirming.

I substituted knitting needles with pens and the resulting sculpture is presented as a printed script. Here knitting serves as a literary device which transcribes herstory. I also see knitting as a time-based medium because it is time consuming, yet in an accelerating world, knitting offers the luxury to slow down. Henceforth I have not sped up the recording, 41 minutes and 24 seconds is how long it took to knit one kaomoji.