MEDIUM: Digital Collage, Digital Photography, Prints
DESCRIPTION:
Cyanotype Chemistry, Watercolor Paper, UV/Sunlight, Negative Overlay on Transparency Film, Glass context Process: Create digital collage, invert to negative, enhance shadows and definition, prepare for cyano print.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT:
My piece, “漂移 – Piāo (Drift),” is a triptych cyanotype, a photo print created from a collage of three Chinese takeout plastic bags. The natural light and the additional layer created by the negative image overlay give the image depth. My piece celebrates my grandfather’s 11-year sojourn in America, working as a cook in my uncle’s restaurant to support the migration of his family, and the strength he showed during that time. The three bags represent the Cantonese culture, which believes that the number three stands for life, prosperity, and positive energy. The bags are oriented differently to represent the way the wind blows, causing the bags to drift lazily in the air. The scene, however, is not quite right, with left becoming right and right becoming left, to represent the disorienting pull between worlds and how memory shifts with time and distance. The message on the bag, which normally says, “Thank You,” is reversed, which, in a way, challenges familiarity, a nod to the cultural dislocation that I suspect my grandfather must have experienced living in another country. The empty spaces create rhythm, but they also represent absence, steadfastness, and sacrifice, with the faint smiley face peeking out to represent the bittersweet price he paid leaving behind his children to give them a better life and the beauty and logic in enduring suffering, no matter how the world turns upside down.
