“You are cloud, ocean, oblivion’s misgt. And you are also all that you have lost.”
When We Look Into Each Other’s Eyes
2023
Video Installation
The Digital Alchemy: Transforming Pixels into Emotions, 2023, Womanmade Gallery, Chicago
Does my mom knowable, or does she unknowable? I don't know. My mother seeped into the whole of my life, while I never really entered her past life. I seem to be caught in a reality that lies between omniscience and unknowability. She incarnated into two images, the familiar mother in front of me, and the woman sealed by memory. I too incarnated into two images, one as her familiar daughter and the other as an adult cut apart by distance, making it difficult for me to tell the difference. "The real is unknowable", human perception can only get as close to the real as possible, but never know what the real is like. Has she really arrived in my life? And how did I come to know her through time.
After I was born, my mother's photos were gradually replaced by photos of the two of us together. I have always walked happily along the path of growth, with my eyes looking ahead to the future. As I ran eagerly into the distance, I gradually forgot about the figure behind me. My mother watched me with the same eagerness, her gaze following me with a gentle, hot glance. For her I was a child with unlimited access to love, but she was carrying the burden of a mother who was overspending her love, her time, her youth... She gradually forgot all about her life.