Southern Sands

Southern Sands explores the fragile and fragmented sense of belonging that emerges in a constructed world.

Nansha (Southern Sands) is a district in Guangzhou built on land reclaimed from the river, once a coastal area of farmland and small villages. Over the past few decades, it has transformed into a vital part of the Greater Bay Area’s ambitious development plans. This geography—reshaped by human ambition—now exists in a surreal state of transition, where the artificial and the natural intertwine, and the concept of home feels as unsettled as the ground itself. Nansha feels like a dream caught between water and concrete—a place that doesn’t fully belong to the land it stands on or the future it strives for.

Through my lens, I seek to capture this sense of displacement, where the symmetry of manmade environments clashes with the remnants of a natural order. In this space, everything feels incomplete—caught in an endless transformation, with the past and future constantly negotiating their place in the present. What does it mean to create a home in a place that holds no memory of its own? How do we anchor ourselves in landscapes designed to reflect progress rather than the past?

Southern Sands explores the fragile and fragmented sense of belonging that emerges in a constructed world. It is a meditation on the strange beauty of transformation, the tension between permanence and impermanence, and the estrangement of living in a place that feels both familiar and alien. Through moments that blur the line between the real and the surreal, this project reflects on what it means to inhabit a space where home is a question, not an answer—and whether a place, built from nothing, can ever truly hold the weight of memory and belonging.