How strange it is to play two people as a child. As a kid, you’re expected to color on the walls or sit at the dinner table doing math homework with your dad. But what happens when you’re the one cleaning the crayons off the wall or helping your siblings with their homework instead?

This project is meant to express those invisible hardships of the girls who lost their childhoods to give their siblings one instead, so that their mother could make ends meet. With a playful yet quiet color palette and the handmade sculptures like the TV dinner paired with self-portraits of me covered in pink paint, it captures the act of wearing the hat of an adult, which blurs her childhood and adulthood into one.

This is an act that does not require applause, but more so seeks recognition for the quiet sacrifices the oldest daughter faces growing up with a single mother. This is an act of love and a sacrifice of loss.