Has a Thin Pink Glow (2014): Ripple Fang covered all gallery surfaces with bubble wrap, put on a gold dress, and painted nail polish on broken glasses.
Has a Thin Pink Glow (2014): Ripple Fang covered all gallery surfaces with bubble wrap, put on a gold dress, and painted nail polish on broken glasses. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

After drawing the gold curtain closed, the psychic asks her client’s name, birth date, and wish. Ripple Fang. August 2, 1992. “I want,” Ripple says, “a visa.”

Pause. The psychic searches Ripple’s face and says, “You are in the darkness.”

Yes, that’s why Ripple went to the psychic in the first place. Her student visa runs out in August, but she wants to stay here and keep making the photographs, installations, and live-cam performances that have earned her the respect of peers and elders in Seattle. Back home in China, she says, “I—just wouldn’t be able to work and think like this.” A sundae of green-tea ice cream melts on the table in front of her…

Jen Graves (The Stranger’s former arts critic) mostly writes about things you approach with your eyeballs. But she’s also a history nerd interested in anything that needs more talking about, from male...