Recover from Oblivion 保存遺忘
Artist Statement
Recover from Oblivion-Together Again is a series of works through which I address how the photographic medium has changed and consequently has affected our understanding of our collective memories with family. After three years in the U.S, I visited my grandparents’ house in Taiwan. In the garage, I found an old cabinet overflowing with family albums and documents. Some of the albums included documentation of my grandfathers’ funeral. My grandfather passed away when I was 4 years old, so I had no memories of him until seeing the pictures at age 32. I realized the sudden death of my grandfather had led my family into chaos. Those memories were all condensed in the cabinet. As I dug into more of the family albums, those “new” old memories started to connect. Memories I treasured from my past experiences stay etched in my mind, although I don’t have physical photographs as evidence. Therefore, I recreate memories, making objects that exist physically in the real world and then using the camera to record them. I pull images from my family photo archives from the 1980s and printed-out screenshots of video calls I captured of my family in the 2020s. I layered photographs, added text, and created different juxtapositions to narrate a mixture of truth, fiction, memories, and the longing for family while we are apart. From past to present, memories intertwined, seeing the photographic media changed over time, this work seeks to resonate with the viewer’s own personal experience. Disregarding what medium we use, one mutual thing that makes us take photos from all time is that we want to remember and be remembered.