Miao Yang

1962

I share personal diasporic experiences through the relationship between memories and images. I embed memories of past family members, significant places, and life-changing events onto paper to mark the milestones in life. These remarkable moments indicate changes, happiness, growth, traditions, and embracement. The intention is to give the memories a new life and allow the impression to live on. As a way to reconfigure, edit, and rejuvenate the past, digitally printed family photographs are dissembled and restored through the artistic process of addition and subtraction. Abstracted portraits appear through the presence of light in relation to the thickness of the pulp paste. The simplified presentation of portraits echoing the ghostly nature of photography narratives in relation to the decayed memories; residue of time manifests through the yellowing of the images. Micro series of paper record the fine detail of the materiality under magnification device, symbolizing the invisibility and limitation of seeing with the naked eye.