My relationship with my Chinese heritage has always been complex. In my younger years, I found myself pushing that part of my identity away, and now as an adult, I regret not learning my language, because I struggle to connect with my culture and family. This practice-led research project has grown out of feeling neither “Australian” nor “Chinese”; it occupies a third space where both cultures hybridise, acknowledging an identity where both co–exist.
The research utilises found objects gifted by family members, with a focus on Traditional Chinese Medicine, archives, photography, textile samples from my mother’s business, and installation, to explore familial and cultural ties and excavate my personal cultural hybridity as a Chinese-Australian second-generation immigrant. I reference the ‘home’ in my installation and photographic practice, as a site for autoethnographic exploration and an ‘affective’ space where audiences are invited to connect and reflect.
I employ textile-based methods such as embroidery, wax-resist dyeing, and patchwork, referencing and reflecting on personal memories and family
archives to trace my lineage, hand stitching them together, to reclaim culture on my own terms. This detailed and labour-intensive work is contemplative and deeply emotional; it is a familial and cultural act of care, where language
and conversation, as well as the practice of caring through Traditional Chinese Medicine, guide both the research and my healing as I recover what was once lost, reconnecting with culture and family through collective memory and identity.
