In the series First Ladies, I explore the space between the immigrant's American Dream and the immigrant’s reality. When my family immigrated to the United States, my father told me that I could become President if I “worked hard enough,” unaware that his immigrant son could never get past the natural-born-citizen clause, not to mention the minefields of class and heteronormativity.

In these photographs I envisioned a new American Dream available to me as an immigrant gay Asian male - that of First Lady - by trying on the faces and characters of previous first ladies from Jacqueline Kennedy who was married to the scion of Irish Catholic immigrants to Michelle Obama who is married to the President whose nationality was in question.