Where Is Home

Where Is Home weaves memory and absence, love and rupture, through portraits of family and place. It lingers on the scars of childhood and the fractures of a city, asking what it means to belong, and where home can truly be found.

Witnessing the irreparable rift between my parents during my childhood left me with a deep and lingering sense of disconnection. Growing up as a "left-behind child" in the city, I learned early on how to say goodbye to my family. Beijing is a city with a serious imbalance in the distribution of resources, and growing up in the suburbs of Beijing, I feel this even more strongly.

In Where Is Home, I photograph the places where I grew up, my family and friends, and recreate the knotted scars of memory. My work Where Is Home was nurtured through the passage of time, reflecting the intertwined love and pain in familial relationships, the confusion and struggles of self-growth, and the divide between urban and rural development. Where is Home also speaks to the ties that bind not only within families, but across broader human relationships.

This work poses the question: How do we define home? Where do we locate a sense of belonging?