Vicissitudes
Be prepared, to struggle for the cause of Communism! 1991/2011, Self-portrait with a Childhood Photo, Archival Inkjet Print, 32”x24” 
Long Live Chairman Mao, 1976/2011, Self-portrait with a Photograph of Father, Archival Inkjet Print, 32”x24” 
For the Motherland, 1975/2011, Self-portrait with a Childhood Photo, Archival Inkjet Print, 34”x34” 
You’re Not a Hero Unless Reaching the Great Wall, 1970/2011, Self-portrait with a Photograph of Grandfather, Archival Inkjet Print, 36”x28” 
A Friend from Afar, 1975/2011, Self-portrait with a Photograph of Father, Archival Inkjet Print, 25”x28” 
West Meets East (Homage to Tseng Kwon Chi), 1993/2011, Self-portrait with a Childhood Photo, Archival Inkjet Print, 32”x24” 
O’er the Land of the Free, 1991/2011, Self-portrait with a Childhood Photo, Archival Inkjet Print, 32”x24” 
Technology Will Set Us Free, 1990/2011, Self-portrait with a Childhood Photo, Archival Inkjet Print, 24”x30” 
East Wind: West Wind, 1978/2011, Self-portrait with a Photograph of Father, Archival Inkjet Print, 32”x24” 
The World Is Eventually Yours, 1992/2011, Self-portrait with a Childhood Photo, Archival Inkjet Print, 32”x24” 
Open to the World, 1992/2011, Self-portrait in a Photograph of Child Self, Archival Inkjet Print, 24”x30” 
The Park Is Closed Today, 1987/2011, Self-portrait with a Childhood Photo, Archival Inkjet Print, 32”x24” 
Liberty Enlightening the World, 1995/2011, Self-portrait with a Childhood Photo, Archival Inkjet Print, 36”x22”
This series of work origins from my personal story. I was born in an Asian country and grew up alongside with the country’s rapid transition of modernization, westernization, and economic boom. Since immigrated to the United States in 2017, my family and motherland have become a distant memory. Are the good old times indeed preserved in faded family albums? When the past evaporated, could we ever go back to see a ray of sadness in the eternal twilight?
Digital post-processing techniques allow me to “travel” back and forth between the past and the present. I merged my current self-portraits into vintage photographs of my grandparents, parents and my childhood to reveal the dramatic changes between the two countries and in the last few decades. The striking visual differences have shown the inescapable influence of the changing cultural and political conditions on my family and my generation. I see the evidence of vicissitudes, and I remember, recover and reconstruct the eternal meaning that will remain after all the vanity under the sun disappears.