BFA, Studio Art – Single Discipline Focus (Photography & Imaging)
Artist Statement
Exodus
When developing Exodus, the fictional story within this body of work comes from my lived experiences, coming from a refugee family. The Secret War altered many Southeast Asian groups, as they fled as refugees and immigrated to different parts of the world. To escape the nature of displacement and genocide, everyone left their homeland, family, and belongings to enter a space of unfamiliarity.
Exodus is a fictional multi-narrative driven series that explores a potential future in which the history of displacement, genocide, and environmental failures occurs again. The scope of this work focuses (but not limited) on the Southeast Asian experience and navigation through the wake of altering oxygen. The exhibition is a cinematic journey through photographic images and text, that not only delves into the continuing realities of departure, but how the experience of immigration and displacement becomes a shared journey.
Each narrative is a non-linear experience taking place in the world of Exodus through different environments, settings, and plots with a different character. Each narrative speculates the world, as they find new ways to cope with a reality that at times confronts trauma and grief.
I specifically crafted Exodus to think about a concerning future and generations to come. One about my own family, but about other families as well. Archival images are used to consolidate a parallel journey of ancestry experiences versus this future journey. Exodus engages in many themes to human life, children, adults, war, trauma, and that of the environment that we are hosted too.
