Shaoxing Villagers

On a family trip to China, we visited the village where my father was born — where generations of our family had lived until the Communist takeover drove them out. As we walked through the neighborhood, an elderly couple approached, curious about the group of foreigners on their street. Watching them talk with my relatives, I felt an uncanny sense of recognition —something in their gestures, the way they stood, their expressions. It was surreal and powerful, and the feeling stayed with me for years. As it turned out, they remembered my grandparents from fifty years before. They were neighbors, friends, perhaps relatives — connections I assumed had been severed decades ago, but which had in fact persisted. That moment opened something in me. My art practice, in the years since, has been in many ways a continuation of that search — for traces of a heritage I grew up at a distance from, but never entirely without.

Life-sized
Corrugated cardboard