I believe that toys and other mass-produced objects are some of the most effective means of assimilation this culture has. They are age and gender specific tools that indoctrinate us with the ideas and values expressed through these objects. They target us at our most impressionable ages - when we're children learning about the world. They teach us what we should think is good and what we should think is evil. They teach us what little boys should be interested in and what little girls should be interested in. They teach us to be creative and sensitize us to a certain aesthetic. These objects can teach us to be loving, responsible, and thoughtful human beings, but they can also teach us to be mindless, violent, and hateful creatures. They even teach us what it means to be an American.

I make images to better define my cultural experience. These images are about assimilation and acculturation and existing in between. Existing in between means living in between cultures and ideas, and very often it means living in between identities. The space in between is not a static space, but instead is constantly flowing and fluctuates from one side to the other. It can mean being neither one thing nor the other, but being both at the same time; therefore existing in an entirely new space with new possibilities. This is the space that accompanies cultural plurality.

Cultural plurality exists in a non-space. It doesn't exist in physical space because it moves from one identity to another. We do this every day as we move from our home environment to the work and school environment. We also do it when we try to speak a second language and get the grammar confused with our first language. But we eventually get the hang of it and it becomes our routine. We adjust to each cultural situation because we know we have to. We have the ability to adapt to any culture because we are all human, but we also have the ability to move in and out of as many different cultures as we please. We don't have to loose our connection to one culture just to adapt to another. We can maintain all our knowledge and experiences to make ourselves more fit to survive in any situation. This can make it possible for an individual to have more than one identity at one time. Then again, each time we learn something new we become a different person anyway.