Vicissitudes: A Life Journey from China to the United States

Recent Exhibition

December 2 – December 16, 2011
Opening Reception: 6-8pm, Friday, December 2, 2011
Gallery 456
Chinese American Arts Council
456 Broadway, New York, NY 10013 (Click for Map)
212.431.9740 www.caacarts.org
Hours: M-F 12-6pm
Media Coverage
World Journal:Newspaper, Website
The China Press: Newspaper, Website
Sing Tao Daily: Newspaper
Mingpao: Newspaper
SinoVision: Television
Sino Television

Artist Statement

My work is derived from my thinking about the inescapable influence of the cultural and political conditions that shaped my personal history.

Born in China in 1980s, I grew up alongside the country’s modernization, westernization and economic boom. Since I started my education in the United States, homeland has become a distant memory in faded family albums. Have the old times truly survived in those photographs? What would happen if I could return and revisit them?

In my images, I combine my current self-portraits with vintage family photographs as a way to reveal the temporal, geographic, cultural and political transformations of my life from China to the United States. When time has evaporated and turned into a photograph that records a ray of sadness in the everlasting twilight, we can never go back. However, digital technology gives me the rare opportunity to travel back and forth between past and present to formulate a deeper understanding. Through my photography, I see the evidence of vicissitudes, and I seek to discover, capture, remember and reconstruct the eternal meaning that will remain after all the vanity under the sun disappears.
我出生於一九八零年代的中國，見證了中國的現代化與經濟騰飛。小時候的我戴著紅領巾，時刻準備著為共產主義事業而奮鬥；與此同時，紅色中國卻向西方世界緩緩揭開了面紗。四年前我赴美留學，東方的故土和家庭的往昔成為漸行漸遠的回憶。唯有翻開老相冊，才看到過往存在的明證；褪色了的畫面卻已黯淡而陌生，宛若黃昏的余輝，提醒著我們那些日子，誠然是回不去了。然而，我仍然一次又一次地自問，假若能回到照片中的時光，我是否還如當初，又將如何面對曾經熟悉的一切？

如今，數位影像技術提供了難得的機會，讓我得以在過往與現實間穿梭往返、徘徊流連。在本系列作品中，我將現今的自拍肖像融入家族以及童年的老照片中，展現出三十多年間的中國人經歷的劇變。通過攝影創作，我看到了滄桑的見證，也試圖去找尋、捕捉並記念那日光之下的捕風與虛空褪盡之後的永恆。