This project examines the cultural displacement of the Chinese lotus across contemporary visual contexts. As a symbol rooted in a specific Chinese cultural and philosophical history, the lotus acquires new meanings as it enters Western commercial culture.

The project considers where cultural reinterpretation begins to approach cultural appropriation, examining cultural translation as a selective process in which meaning is retained, displaced and repackaged. It asks not only what is translated, but also what becomes obscured when a cultural symbol enters another system of value.