feel free to move the images
huan xiang (2023-24)
A mixed-media installation on queer/feminist family history/memories
Supported by the John Hope Franklin Documentary Award & Creative Arts Award
Exhibition:
2024/11/26-2024/1/26
“familiar chaos,” Durham Art Guild 70th Juried Exhibition, Durham Arts Council Truist Gallery, Durham, NC
Juror: william cordova
2024/4/25-2024/10/05
(shown in full series) Lyndhurst Gallery, Center for Documentary Studies, Durham, NC
community open hours: 2024/9/24-26, 10/1-4 4-7pm
A mixed-media installation on queer/feminist family history/memories
Supported by the John Hope Franklin Documentary Award & Creative Arts Award
Exhibition:
2024/11/26-2024/1/26
“familiar chaos,” Durham Art Guild 70th Juried Exhibition, Durham Arts Council Truist Gallery, Durham, NC
Juror: william cordova
2024/4/25-2024/10/05
(shown in full series) Lyndhurst Gallery, Center for Documentary Studies, Durham, NC
community open hours: 2024/9/24-26, 10/1-4 4-7pm
huan xiang 幻象，幻想，还乡 (illusion, imagination, impossibility, of home) is a mixed-media installation weaving analog and digital photography and memory objects. Drawing from fieldwork in my mother’s hometown in northern Jiangsu (江苏宿迁) and my home city of Dongguan (东莞), I explore my relationship to fragmented family history/memories as a young transnational queer feminist who came of age while studying and living abroad in the US.
In “constellation”, I organized a collage based on three central images that emanated outward into eclipses of my memories. Between family gatherings as spaces of simultaneous connection and disconnection, a trip to the abandoned Mudun island (木墩) my family used to live on, and domestic spaces that show collaging as a labor of love, the boundaries between the three groupings are intentionally blurred, showing the interwovenness of memories. Curated vintage family albums sit on a shelf for the audience to flip through. In “tending”, from the photo of my grandma’s altar for her late parents and my late grandfather, I take the creative liberty to make my own altar. I find solace in creating alternative, photographic rituals of honoring them even though I cannot pass on their traditions.
Ultimately, this deeply autobiographical project seeks to reimagine queer/feminist memory making that carves out nuanced spaces of creativity for folks who feel distant from yet intimately connected with familial legacy. Through writing on my prints and directly onto the walls, I hope the audience can feel free to co-create their own memory ritual while moving through this exhibition.
In “constellation”, I organized a collage based on three central images that emanated outward into eclipses of my memories. Between family gatherings as spaces of simultaneous connection and disconnection, a trip to the abandoned Mudun island (木墩) my family used to live on, and domestic spaces that show collaging as a labor of love, the boundaries between the three groupings are intentionally blurred, showing the interwovenness of memories. Curated vintage family albums sit on a shelf for the audience to flip through. In “tending”, from the photo of my grandma’s altar for her late parents and my late grandfather, I take the creative liberty to make my own altar. I find solace in creating alternative, photographic rituals of honoring them even though I cannot pass on their traditions.
Ultimately, this deeply autobiographical project seeks to reimagine queer/feminist memory making that carves out nuanced spaces of creativity for folks who feel distant from yet intimately connected with familial legacy. Through writing on my prints and directly onto the walls, I hope the audience can feel free to co-create their own memory ritual while moving through this exhibition.