Let’s make a deal-T/T (Part)
2022-2023
Inject print,
Phone sized arcrylic
2022-2023
Inject print,
Phone sized arcrylic
In Let’s Make a Deal I address my tumultuous relationship with my traditionalist father. We were both born and raised in Taiwan but we have vastly different views on life. Flash point of our contention was in 2022, when I came out to him as a lesbian. Every section of the project marks a path of rebuilding my relationship with my father, where photography becomes a medium of “currency” for us to reach out to one another.
The work consists of five sections and the premise of the project is built on the fact that my father was absent for most of my childhood due to the nature of his work in manufacturing and selling car parts. I had no emotional connection with my father to begin with and that was further complicated when I found out I was a lesbian at a young age. I quickly realized that I was not allowed to voice who I truly was, resulting in further alienation. Let’s Make a Deal is my attempt to cross that distance.
The first part of the work hinges on smartphone sized photos pinned to the wall in linear clusters, titled T/T (Telegraphic transfer). These images are of cities around the United States, including Chicago, that my father traveled to for work. By photographing these places, I am following in his steps and searching for places of familiarity that I can share with him. After I send him these photos, I imagine him zooming in and out on the photos after he receives them to more closely examine various details. I use the photos as currency, trading these images for his stories as well as his attention.
My father drove me to school every day for twelve years. The car was a space of uneasy silence, suspended between parental care and teenage angst. This covered car door, which is full of photographs fashioned in different textures, points to other possibilities: different kinds of pasts and futures.
Like many cities, rivers run through industrial cities my father traveled to on business. A vessel, like a canoe, is a way to journey through those places. My vessel is constructed of fungal mycelia, physically made up of millions of small relationships and connections, with the cultivation of the fungi requiring my care not my manipulation. As the photographs embedded within the vessel are consumed by the mycelia they become part of it; as I work with my friends to grow the vessel we become more a part of each other.
In 2022 after I experienced a break up I craved the support of my father. This entailed me coming out to him, and his having to process his new perception of me. In painting a portrait of my father I feel like an archaeologist brushing away the sands of time and unearthing my emotions to share with him. It also allows me the chance to ponder on each of his photographs in more detail, even though we now live on different continents from one another.
The work consists of five sections and the premise of the project is built on the fact that my father was absent for most of my childhood due to the nature of his work in manufacturing and selling car parts. I had no emotional connection with my father to begin with and that was further complicated when I found out I was a lesbian at a young age. I quickly realized that I was not allowed to voice who I truly was, resulting in further alienation. Let’s Make a Deal is my attempt to cross that distance.
The first part of the work hinges on smartphone sized photos pinned to the wall in linear clusters, titled T/T (Telegraphic transfer). These images are of cities around the United States, including Chicago, that my father traveled to for work. By photographing these places, I am following in his steps and searching for places of familiarity that I can share with him. After I send him these photos, I imagine him zooming in and out on the photos after he receives them to more closely examine various details. I use the photos as currency, trading these images for his stories as well as his attention.
My father drove me to school every day for twelve years. The car was a space of uneasy silence, suspended between parental care and teenage angst. This covered car door, which is full of photographs fashioned in different textures, points to other possibilities: different kinds of pasts and futures.
Like many cities, rivers run through industrial cities my father traveled to on business. A vessel, like a canoe, is a way to journey through those places. My vessel is constructed of fungal mycelia, physically made up of millions of small relationships and connections, with the cultivation of the fungi requiring my care not my manipulation. As the photographs embedded within the vessel are consumed by the mycelia they become part of it; as I work with my friends to grow the vessel we become more a part of each other.
In 2022 after I experienced a break up I craved the support of my father. This entailed me coming out to him, and his having to process his new perception of me. In painting a portrait of my father I feel like an archaeologist brushing away the sands of time and unearthing my emotions to share with him. It also allows me the chance to ponder on each of his photographs in more detail, even though we now live on different continents from one another.