How to Forgive

How to Forgive, 2025. Bà Ngoại’s (Grandmother) thread, dầu khuynh diệp (eucaplyptus oil) as gifted by my mother-in-law Dì Ba, and graphite encased in hand-built wooden light box, 12 x 12”. Created with the support of Marianne Oberg Foundation for Spiritual Art, Charlotte, North Carolina.

How to Forgive begins as a letter written to my father. In it, I ask for his forgiveness for my own trespasses while offering the same. As I contemplate forgiveness as choice, word becomes flesh and materializes into the textual and textural.

The title How to Forgive does not offer a solution or method for how to go about beseeching or offering forgiveness, but rather considers the manner in which we might proceed toward reconciliation with willingness, tenderness, and humility. As each particular situation requires different approaches, How to forgive examines possible advances toward reconciliation.

I consider forgiveness as likened unto generosity, in that the mere expression may be insufficient in transforming the giver and/or receiver. As true generosity does not lie simply in the act of giving, but rather in a giving that is offered with a generous heart, a true forgiveness might grow from this same vine—one that is born from the spirit, rooted in the heart, and with the hope to perpetuate good, abolishing the shackles with which unforgiveness has arrested the offenders and much as the offended. This kind of forgiveness illuminates the darkness wherein resentment and bitterness can implant itself before festering in our hearts like a relentless mold that poisons our interior. True forgiveness, like true generosity, is done in love, sometimes silently and offered without request, when the love and concern for another far surpasses the desire to yoke their wrists, and ours, with unforgiveness, even with the recognition of wrongdoing.

The lightbox presents a choice. These words of forgiveness are only made visible by choosing to pull/loosen the chain that will illuminate the text. It is this light that can guide us closer toward the ways of forgiveness, should we choose to see and know and respond.

Further echoing the private practice of forgiveness, the words are kept quiet, handwritten in my father’s mother tongue, from right to left and in mirror-reverse en verso. It is mended with threads inherited from Bà Ngoại whose faith made her swift to forgive. A paint stroke of eucalyptus oil, gifted by Dì Ba as a healing ointment, provides a space for light to penetrate. This aperture, through which forgiveness can be more clearly visible, offers just a portion of the love letter as encouragement for those who wrestle with these same undertakings in seeking and offering pardon.

How to Forgive is an ever-emergent work in the studio as in life.