2025 marks the 18th year my family has lived in our apartment in Guangdong, China. Especially when I came back from a year abroad, during which my mother took full charge on house decorating, I was immediately struck by the resurgence of the Canton-millennial style. The feeling of stepping into a little home in the era when China’s economy was booming in the 2000s. My mother’s habit of keeping everything, from Chinese New Year decorations and childhood objects belonging to my brother and me, to even my parents, helps form the unique “messy aesthetic” of our home.

In Chinese culture, home is an important and intimate place. Home is also fragile to some extent. A home might be lost because of economic shifts, or because someone no longer belongs… The concept of this project emerged from the meditation of change and continuity, and the flow of memory. Mobius strips were used in the creation to symbolize the recurrence of everyday life. This series aims to portray the presence of the family without them being physically present in the photographs. The conceptual framing also carries my emotional weight of departing from home at this point of beginning to be independent from where I’ve grown up.

In terms of medium and techniques, I chose to work with analogue photography in low light conditions and imprecise focus on purpose, making the grains naturally more visible, to mimic the texture of graphite drawing. This is the first project that I turn inward to reflect on myself, my family, and our personal space, both physical and emotional, and I wish to make those intangible memories tactile. (2025)