In the book Wild Swans, Jung Chang recounts her experience of living through the violence and chaos of the Cultural Revolution. At one point, she recalls being “told to go out and start removing all the grass from the lawns.” She writes:

Mao had instructed that grass, flowers, and pets were bourgeois habits and were to be eliminated.

Yard Work is a performance that speaks to the disconnect between the above passage and the relative tranquility of my own experience. Whereas Chang was instructed to remove grass, I spent a month growing it, at which point I attempted to sell it to potential customers. What wasn’t sold was laid in my yard, acknowledging the discrepancy between Chang's experience and my own.