By Kat Herriman

Artist Xin Liu believes the universe is like a diner: if you don’t tell the waiter what you want, how will they know to fire it in the kitchen? If you don't order, you're never going to eat—and that is why Liu always asks. Her prayers are not bigger or more absurd than other people’s, but they might be more specific. She’s not a pedant per se, just someone who likes poking holes in the expected to entertain herself and, hopefully, others too.

One of her wishes was to send one of her wisdom teeth to space, an homage to ​​the Japanese anime series, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and her belief that if we ever leave this earth, it will be as something as cold and dead as the vacuum of space or a tooth. She checked off that dream in 2019 using Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket.