In My Past Lives
This series of work consists of found images depicting women’s hairstyles in pre-modern East Asia. Captured by the lens of Western photographers in a period in which Orientalism was pervasive in the West, these images took part in the construction of an exoticized oriental symbol in the Western narrative back in the twentieth century.
I overpaint these photographs with watery and flesh-like patterns of rice colored with red ink , drawing on biblical stories in which hair serves as a source of strength and sustenance. Through this disruptive approach, I raise question to the disputable role of documentary photography in flattening the cultural subjects in focus and investigate how symbolic materials and cultural entanglements can be mobilized to reimagine questions of ‘belonging’ and ‘becoming’.
This series of work consists of found images depicting women’s hairstyles in pre-modern East Asia. Captured by the lens of Western photographers in a period in which Orientalism was pervasive in the West, these images took part in the construction of an exoticized oriental symbol in the Western narrative back in the twentieth century.
I overpaint these photographs with watery and flesh-like patterns of rice colored with red ink , drawing on biblical stories in which hair serves as a source of strength and sustenance. Through this disruptive approach, I raise question to the disputable role of documentary photography in flattening the cultural subjects in focus and investigate how symbolic materials and cultural entanglements can be mobilized to reimagine questions of ‘belonging’ and ‘becoming’.
