30 / (zh) 三十而立 is a wall installation made of thirty ceramic fortune cookies. Its Chinese title, 三十而立, comes from a phrase often understood as “at thirty, one becomes established.” As I approach my thirtieth birthday, I have been thinking about the expectations attached to that age.

From a distance, the thirty fortune cookies appear consistent and unified. Up close, each one has its own character through differences in colour, surface, and cracking. Some of the cracks are stained with China ink, making them more visible. I see these marks as traces left by age and experience. They reflect how my identity can appear stable from the outside, while a closer look reveals the changes, tensions, and imperfections that have shaped it.

Turning thirty is often treated as a point when a person should have a clear direction, a stable career, or a stronger sense of self. This work questions that expectation. Rather than presenting thirty as a moment of certainty, it considers the pressure to feel established while I am still changing and trying to understand where I belong.

30 is part of the same series as 100 , a related installation that continues my use of repetition, numbers, and ceramic fortune cookies to think about identity.