In her 2½-minute video “Amulet,” award-winning artist Helen Lee shows her own image morphing into that of her young daughter Cicada. Both are dressed in black and framed by a black background, reciting Zhuyin Fuhao, a Chinese phonetic alphabet used today, Lee says, only in Taiwan and by the Chinese diaspora.
Lee, an associate professor of art and head of the Glass Lab at UW-Madison, wears a delicate necklace in the video with a small charm made from jade. It’s from her grandmother, and something she wears every day.