House of Yuan

House of Yuan

Inspired by my aunt’s story, I made a video and collage about the ‘Yuan’ family house – the first two-story building in Guiding, China owned by my family. It was important because it represented Confucian values of respect and togetherness. Though I never experienced it due to the Chinese government’s takeover, I tried to capture its essence. Gaston Bachelard’s idea of the relationship between people and their homes spoke to me. I went through the process of building and reviving, trying to find my identity in two different spaces. At the same time, I express my desire to reconnect with my family and preserve their stories.

Bind

Bind explores memory, identity, and cultural preservation through immigration. I use objects and photos to capture our connection to our homeland and weave them into collages that tell our immigration experience. I’m fascinated by our family’s culinary traditions, passed down without written recipes. To visualize this, I reinterpret these traditions in collages, creating a visual journal of our migration. By using English cookbooks, I symbolize my bilingual upbringing and my parents’ limited English proficiency. This process affirms our place in the local Chinese community while maintaining our Chinese identity.