Home As I Remember It (2026), Photo Installation; edited photos, watermelon, egg, tomato, coke, red envelop, washbasin, red scarf, clock, christmas hat, strawberry; 0.8m x 0.6m x 1m​​​​​​​
Through a combination of edited photographs and collected objects—replicas of items depicted in the images and sourced locally in Toronto—this work reconstructs an attempt to spatially and materially reassemble a childhood environment in Hangzhou, China. It reflects on memory as an incomplete archive of my life at the turn of the millennium, when China was rapidly developing. These are a selection from the thousands of photos my parents took, and I intend to shift the viewer's focus from the photographers' intended subject—me—to that specific time and place. In a way that makes time lose its linearity, I use text to stitch the moments of making this work back to my childhood.
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Translation notes for the text in the photos (Chinese to English):
My parents always wanted me to become an accountant.
How is it that people are constantly guided — and limited — in their thoughts and visions by technology?
Sometimes I wish we could have more choices.
I mean, the possibilities of a career should include things like a scent taxonomist, a wind catcher, and so on.
Already at the age where I no longer receive red envelopes, but the red envelopes I once collected are now used to order takeout.
After money changed from paper bills to numbers on Alipay, this "100" and that "100" became the same.
We have no way to save and distinguish "the red envelope money received at age 12" anymore.

Left: Bad things can turn into good things

Right: I remember this is my ancestral home in Dongyang, and it has many very old things.


Left: This is my favorite little rabbit stuffed animal

Middle: As a child I lived inside a dream

I was the king of my toys

They were my brothers and sisters.

Right: Or perhaps I lived in (and controlled) someone else's body — I would live in the place of the "heart."

It seems like during Chinese New Year there would always be a very long car ride to Dongyang

Whether it's wontons or dumplings, the way the dough and filling look before cooking is always more appetizing than after

My only memory of my cousin is this face now.

Where did the Nokia that could play Snake go?

As a child I wouldn't eat on my own, as a result all kinds of people were there to feed me

It came with me to the new world

I don't remember what my own home looked like at this age, but I do remember the look and structure of this house: there was an orange-yellow curved corridor, the kitchen and bathroom seemed to be right next to each other near the entrance, and then the living room and dining room.

The first dish I learned to cook

I still remember spending ten minutes beating the egg whites to make sure they were evenly mixed

The first dish I learned to cook

I hate playing piano

I hate classical music

I like the melodies in Miyazaki's animations

My younger cousin was the one suited for piano, not me

I even admired her for being the head student

Time

Always rushing against time

Always being rushed

Always hearing "hurry up."

Hurry up and do your homework, hurry up and eat, hurry up and go to sleep, hurry up and shower, hurry up and throw away the little rabbit you're having, hurry up and stop reading extra curriculum books, hurry up and go to school. I never forgave "hurry up," and she never apologized.

Hurry up and grow up, otherwise you'll go back home and take the gaokao exam with them, hurry up and come eat, hurry up and stop being stubborn, hurry up and take your hands out, hurry up and throw that kitten out it can just live on its own.

But we really always have so much time

Red scarf (required to be worn by young students as a symbol of honor in mainland China), school uniform

I became you, you became me

Ego generating...

This "Xinjiang hat" at home was something I knew before I knew Xinjiang itself, or the Xinjiang spoken of by politicians.

As the king of the toys, sitting on her throne

My dad was the new breed of his time: he could copy cassette tapes, had a computer very early on, and would call me from Hainan while sending animated stickers. Watching the animation of these stickers was something I did purposefully, not something casually sent along with a message the way it is now.

They gave barbie dolls for girls, toy cars for boys

Top: Last summer I saw his mother again — a person of high status and power in society, the same face as before, but she gave me a completely different, brand new impression. I hate these kinds of moments. Starting from a certain age, you begin to observe people differently, and find that they have all taken off their colorful masks, revealing what lies underneath, so far from the impression they left in childhood.

Bottom: The thing he'd rather forget: as a child he said he wanted to become the President of the United States (and I remembered it, and truly believed he would become a "big shot").

Did I truly ever "know" these people? I don't remember them at all.

Children are like puppets on strings pulled by adults.

Left: The winters in Hangzhou are wet and cold, completely opposite to the dryness of Canada

Strangely, I had no trouble adapting at all

Right: Indoors you would generally wear 4 layers of clothing

Every home must have at least one washbasin

As a child, they (my parents) gave me many dolls of animated characters, but never let me watch the cartoons

— I often wondered why these ducks and bears looked the way they did