Tian Xia (Under Heaven)
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Dates2020 - Ongoing
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Author
- Locations New York, Shanghai, Beijing, Memphis, Collierville, Volland
This is a project about my family, the American South, and the dialectical nature of lived and imagined truths.
In high school, I learned of my father’s involvement with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Shortly after, I found a photograph of demonstrators overtaking a military vehicle. The man standing on the tank had my father’s profile and stocky legs, but when I asked Baba if that was him, he refused to answer. Later, I chose to show the picture to my history class, telling everyone that my father was the same man in the photograph. This memory was my first introduction to the ambiguity of the camera lens—where documentary and a rewriting of truth can occur.
This memory serves as a cornerstone of Tian Xia, a project I’ve been developing over the last four years using a combination of old family pictures and contemporary images I’ve captured with my view camera. My photographs depict familial intimacy and examine the blurred lines between imagination and documentation. A pitted dragon fruit cleaved open like a broken heart is paired with portraits of a matriarch in red, in one frame gazing directly at the viewer and in the other looking afar. Pictures of overseas family members are sequenced alongside recent portraits of individuals living in the US, their faces wavering between illumination and obscuration. By pairing recent images captured on film with archival family photographs, I craft a non-linear story that reflects on family folklore and fictional truths.
In considering America’s geopolitical state, Tian Xia intends to uplift the immigrant narrative and contribute to the conversation on diasporic identities. If this country is made of immigrants, then it should follow that we ask what our origin stories are—as a nation, as families, and as individuals. Where we come from can refer to the nature of our conception, geographically and culturally speaking; it can also be a question of family: How much am I like my father? How much am I like my mother? And how much am I like myself?
