"The dancer is based on a photo taken by Walter Spies in Bali, titled A Young Balinese Legong Dancer From Bedulu, 1936. The fluctuating size of Alice in Wonderland becomes a way for me to think about the changing significance of the Balinese people within the image of paradise. In the painting, the Legong dancer appears almost smaller compared to the water lily, which to me acts as an exaggerated image of Bali as a tropical paradise. The Legong dancer, despite carrying a complex history of ritual, discipline, femininity and cultural value, is reduced in scale while the image of paradise becomes increasingly monumental.

Traditionally, legong dancers were girls who had not yet reached puberty. They began rigorous training at about the age of five. These dancers were regarded highly in the society and usually became wives of royal personages or wealthy merchants. They would usually stop dancing after marriage. Legong itself is inspired by Sang Hyang Dedari Dance.

Legong, with its complex relationship to sacred performance, court culture and contemporary tourism, becomes a particularly loaded example of how a living cultural practice can be transformed into spectacle. The dancer is no longer performing a tradition, but also performing an image of Bali for an external gaze. Like Alice, whose body changes according to the strange environments she enters, the dancer is the cultural subject that produces the spectacle, but the spectacle becomes larger than the subject itself. The paradise image consumes her. "