in the space between

My work “In the Space Between” begins with absence. As a Chinese-American adoptee, I construct staged photographic self-portraits that trace identity without a continuous origin, building meaning from fragments rather than inheritance. Raised at a distance from my cultural beginnings, I create images where what is missing becomes as present as what is seen. Through fabrication, manipulation, and the repeated use of my own body, I treat photography as both evidence and illusion. The figure shifts between visibility and erasure, holding identity as unstable, partial, and continuously reconstructed. Within this space of absence, I examine intimacy and desire, where relationships, particularly with Chinese men, become sites of projection, longing, and imagined belonging. These encounters reflect a search for cultural recognition while revealing the limits of locating identity through another person. The work resists resolution, lingering in uncertainty and inviting viewers to consider how absence, as much as presence, shapes the self.