When I go home, I want it to be perfect (2023) is a prototype for a bath toy. 3D-printed buoys link together to form a chain, a miniature version of the chain of four-foot tall buoys enforcing the US-Mexico border in the Rio Grande, installed by the Texas government in 2023. Each buoy is engraved on its interior with the words of someone who has migrated over a national border. Enclosed in the naturally protective substance of amber resin, which acts as a protective shield and healing substance in the plant world, the words are carried safely within the violent architecture of a floating border. “When I go home, I want it to be perfect” is buoy prototype #1, the words belonging to a friend of mine—born into a Laotian refugee family days after they arrived to the US—who is awaiting, maybe stalling, the day he will finally visit his country.
