Jamie Ho : Junli Song
May June July August September
👯♀️orchid sisters 👯♀️ - Jamie test iteration
@jamie = coral
@jamie = coral
@junli = jade
My hand, clothed in pantyhose (a restrictive garment, a dresscode for women), transforms my hand into a representation of a hand. Not a hand, but a “hand”. The pantyhose smooths out imperfections yet at the same time, creates an obstacle in the pursuit of creating a dog out of the shadow of my hand. In the struggle, my hand manages to form the dog, but at what cost? The loss of a nail in mid gesture and the misaligned fingernails in a jagged zigzag across my hand.
The shadow dog is a reference to Tiangou, a black dog who ate the moon with Chang’e in it before spatting the moon and Chang’e out to become a guardian of a gate in the heavens or as we might know it as an interpretation of the solar or lunar eclipse. The myth of Chang’e has many interpretations, but for me, instead of a thief or a protector, she symbolizes freedom and independence from patriarchal society.
On top of my pantyhosed hand, Junli’s animation forms from a bud into a hand that moves from one orchid hand formation into another. Struggling and at times lagging to keep up with my hand, Junli’s hand fades out before fading back into existence, cycling back into a bud. Meant to view as a looped stop motion, our hands are constantly in a flux, in constant struggle with each other. Through the use of layering and overlapping motions, the work exposes the contradictory nature of fitting into a single idea, both the impossibility of fitting into patriarchal ideals of beauty or into the expectations of two different value systems. In this test of combining both my and Junli’s visual language, our own versions of “hands” and gestures, I’m considering the real versus representation, the utopic possibilities of escape and the endless cycle of expectations
I think one benefit from us conducting our tests independently is that we worked with the given materials without the influence of the original intentions. You used my animated hand to reinforce your original GIF, and so it was really interesting to see my own work placed in this unexpected context. Failure is such a large topic in queer theory, and the use of the GIF and the repeated looping cycle of failures is captured in the work. What I’m curious about are what you call ‘the utopic possibilities of escape,’ and how and when we can start to reveal this potential in the work. I’m interested in whether you see failures as alternative routes, as in Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure, or if failures are obstacles that must be overcome? What happens in the aftermath of the failure?
The layering of my hand on yours makes me think of mimicry. You attempted to in match the angles and pattern of movement so that my orchid hands seemed like a ghostly shadow of yours, fading in and out. I think about the function of mimicry in nature, where it can act as camouflage/protection or warning/intimidation based on deception. In this case, there are multiple layers of mimicry: my hand onto your hand, the pantyhose-covered hand trying to copy a ‘normal’ hand, and also that hand referencing and creating the shadow of the tiangou. Like in nature, perhaps this mimicry is a practice of fiction and make-believe that serves as a form of defense and protection.
My individual work is less tied to real-world representations, but I also ‘mimic’ the familiar when I create my own interpretations of referenced subjects (e.g. my ‘lotus’ flowers made with hands). I am really curious about how our different approaches to mimicry will come together and what new possibilities this will open up. How do we navigate real and imagined landscapes and ways of being as a collaborative? World-building is generally a very solitary endeavour, and I’m excited to work together and to learn from each other.
This animation experiment was an attempt to combine Jamie and my visual languages, which are extremely different. I thought it would be a unique challenge to make such disparate worlds come together and create a new space. Starting with some videos and animated elements we drew from existing work, my approach was to insert some of Jamie’s GIFs, but mediated through my own shapes and imagery.
For the past year, I have been reflecting on modularity, and the role it plays in my work. It is becoming increasingly important for my practice, both as a process and a way of thinking. Modular creation has played a central role in Chinese cultural production from its inception, from the invention of printmaking to mass production of ceramics, and notably the written language. This last example has taken up a lot of my thought recently because I began auditing a Chinese course this fall and am learning how to write and read characters for the first time - a new source of knowledge which has already begun to filter into the way I look at my artwork.
Glissant’s writing has been seminal in the development of my artistic thought. In particular, his insistence that identity is not fixed, but rather relational; and therefore everything is always in movement. Since I began deliberately working with modularity, I have come to realise how much this approach embodies relationality. Returning to the example of Chinese writing: characters are created as combinations of modules, each of which signify a meaning or association. They can be recombined endlessly, resulting in the vast sea of characters that are indecipherable to the eye unless you have learned the language. In the Chinese writing system, I perceive a way of thinking about the creation of meaning that embodies Glissant’s relationality. Different modules combine to form new meanings, and the same module will change the character’s meaning dependent on its context. So the fascinating thing is that over time, as you learn more modules and their significations, you can sometimes guess at the meaning of a character even if you have never seen it before by trying to decipher how the different modules might relate to one another to create a unique meaning. Some of these translations are incredibly poetic and beautiful; for instance, the character 明 (ming), which can be translated as ‘bright’, is composed of the characters for sun (ri) and moon (yue) side by side.
So what does this have to do with animation? As I said earlier, I am increasingly thinking modularly, and now I am applying that to animation as well. What happens when I create an animated module (i.e. a stop-motion sequence of shapes) that I can then combine, multiple, change in scale, alter the content via masking, and so on? I can then play with all these elements, and create endless combinations by combining them with other modules as well as new elements that I import, such as Jamie’s GIFs, to create endless possibilities for new meanings and relationships. How do my animated hands mean differently, for instance, when combined with my monotypes compared to when combined with Jamie’s photographic imagery? What happens when real bodies enter the world? These are all questions that I am excited to explore as one half of Orchid Sisters. Moving forward, our next steps will be more purposeful, as we make new materials to play with that are specific to our ideas as a collaborative, rather than a melding of two independent artists pursuing our separate ideas. Like the ancient Chinese in the process of creating new characters for words that did not yet exist in writing, we can thoughtfully choose which elements we input and arrange them in relation to one another, to create a meaning uniquely our own.
I like the idea of applying the process of creating new characters for words that do not yet exist as a method for creating a new visual language for a world we’re building. It feels like a poetic intention for our collaboration and a foundation that we will come back to again and again as our collaboration continues and grows. I’m excited for new formations, for new rituals out of our shared but different ancestral histories, ideas and processes as well as new worlds.
I’m very interested in, too, this idea of real bodies entering our world building process. Is what’s real for you the physical manifestation in the process? The documentation process of photographs against the drawing/paintings of hands? Maybe not at all! I see the bodies in my work (which often is my body or a standin for my body) as shapeshifters, as creating something unreal, a simulation. A hand is no longer a hand, because it may be read as a hand but also as a flower. Once a dear friend saw one of my GIFs and told me how they thought the hand was real, but on further inspection, could see it wasn’t. This has stayed with me and I’ve been thinking about this idea of the real and unreal, about the representation of the body in relationship with the weight of “truth” in photography and how this might apply here where the media is truly interdisciplinary. We both use mediums that have a history of reproductive value. This also makes me think of what Anne Anlin Cheng wrote in her essay, “Ornamentalism,” "The yellow woman is an, if not the, original cyborg.” The conflation of otherness and personhood into objects is at the center of this statement. In our collaboration, how do we in turn reclaim this narrative? Is it by using our combined language of creating new shapes out of our bodies?
In your approach, we see a landscape of bodies, of plant matter formulated out of hands, both mine or yours. We see a reveal, the flowers opening up to reveal an eye made up of my moon and pantyhosed hands. I love reveals because reveals are portals into something both in the past and in the future. Reveals are a way to ask the viewer to suspend their disbelief and find a new understanding. I see in this work one way to merge our disparate languages and I’m excited to think more about collage in relation to our work and what new worlds we can imagine together.
May June July August September
orchid sisters
👯♀️orchid sisters 👯♀️
@jamie = coral
@junli = jade
@jamie = coral
@junli = jade
@Jamie,
So we’ve spent the past few months sharing about our families and growing up, and the way that intersects with our current lives. Some themes that continue to come up in our stories (both individual and familial) are: loss/absence, movement/transition, adaptation/assimilation, and memory/history. These play a large role in our work as well, and I think that’s why we formed a pretty instant connection when we first met. We’ve been wanting to collaborate visually for a while now, and so this project seemed like a great opportunity to make that a reality.
So for our readers, Jamie and I met at Penland the summer before our thesis year of our MFA programs - so that’s in 2022. We both signed up for the porcelain performance workshop led by Jennifer Ling Datchuk, an artist we both admire. It was a really special experience, the first time in my life really that I was around fellow Asian American artists and connecting over our shared experiences. I have a hard time describing how impactful that week was - actually I think it was less, maybe five days? @Jamie, maybe you want to share your impressions?
The Penland workshop kickoff a very special summer for me as well. I went to my first residency soon after and it was a summer that proved to me that I could still have a chronic illness and have experiences in new places. I don’t have the words to express how important it was to me. I think too it felt amazing to connect with people and be in a space where there was others that understood at an innate level my references. I think I never got so excited talking about Peking Opera and the orchid fingers than when I realized we shared similar interests!
I kinda already planned on making these porcelain nail guards going into the workshop but our decision to collaborate came at a great surprise! There was no time to fire the pieces (so mine broke through the move 😭) but I hope one day we can redesign them to work. @Junli, do you remember how we came up with collab name, orchid sisters?
Yes!! It was a moment of real voodoo mystique, because I was thinking of that name too, and you said it right before I was going to! Haha, it makes me think of how Jennifer kept teasing us that we were mentally linked at Penland. I know we were wanting to make this collaboration a bit more official, and we were using this emoji 👯♀️ until we figured out a name. We decided on it during our residency at Vermont Studio Center last summer - I think while we were in your studio?
And fyi my porcelain pieces from Penland broke too - I made these super super tiny hands and of course a couple of the fingers snapped off. Heartbreaking! The collaboration was a complete surprise for me as well, and it was both the first time I really worked with someone else visually, but also the first time I put my body into work. It felt very strange and unfamiliar but also exciting - I can’t imagine doing that with someone who I didn’t feel such an instant kinship with. It’s something I really appreciate about our friendship, how we make such different work, and yet we both orbit around a lot of shared interests and research. Including our name, which refers to the orchid hands from Peking opera. Actually I don’t know if we’ve talked about this before, but what first drew you to that research topic @Jamie?
Several places drew me in; my memory of my dad playing soundtracks in my childhood until my mom and I just complained too much and he stopped. 🥲 I hated it because I didn’t understand it and it was so different to the music playing on the radio. This was a really wild opinion of mine at the time because Leslie Cheng played such an important role in what I listened to growing up and he was in Farewell My Concubine which Peking Opera plays a large role. (Side note: When both Cheng and Anita Mui -who I had the biggest crush on- died in 2003, I was so heartbroken, I stopped listening to canto-pop for at least a decade)
Peking Opera, and other forms of Chinese Opera feature many roles played by the opposite gender and as someone who uses drag as a method of muddling western patriarchal understanding of gender, referencing Peking Opera with all the connections I had with it and it being so uniquely Chinese, felt joyful.
@Junli, you also have a strong connection to it and I remember after the Penland workshop you spent some time practicing orchid hands, both in drawing and performing the gesture themselves. They’re also at one point, if not still referenced in your work. How has it’s influence impacted your work?
Yeah, the orchid hands really became a bit of an obsession for me. I think for a few reasons; one is as you said, they are such a uniquely Chinese reference, and I was drawn to that additional layer of meaning. I also have always loved drawing hands, and I was fascinated by the idea of this theatrical language conveyed without words. I find the drag aspect interesting as well, but for different reasons - the fact that women weren’t allowed to play alongside men in the theater being the reason why the dan (the primary female role) was historically portrayed by men struck me as a reflection of how patriarchal Chinese society is. So then we enter into the topic of intersectionality, and how we can be caught between oppressions both from inside and outside our ancestral cultures. I think that’s a large part of why my research has delved so deeply into Buddhism and Daoism, because unlike with Confucian values there is value placed upon the feminine aspects of the world. I feel like growing up, I felt alienated from a lot of Chinese culture because of those patriarchal norms placed upon a woman’s value as solely a wife and a mother. As a child, the West seemed much more ‘enlightened’ and liberated - even though later I realised that it was really just better at hiding its own problems.
But I digress. Back to orchid hands - I think for me, the appeal was the idea of communicating with our community, in a way that is not recognized by outsiders. It’s such a culturally specific language, and I think it can evoke the atmosphere of Peking theater even without knowledge of the meaning of specific gestures. I’m really compelled by the idea of evoking an atmosphere or environment, and I think most Chinese people, whether in the mainland or a diaspora, have a memory of seeing a performance whether on TV or in person. I do still use the orchid hands, although lately my research has been more focused on Buddhism so now I’ve started incorporating mudras as well, which are hand gestures drawn from Buddhism. These also carry a performative aspect as they are often used in rituals, and I also find the variations between different traditions (e.g. Chinese vs. Japanese vs. Tibetan) fascinating as well. There’s also this tension there, with which traditions to draw from - acknowledging how much is shared between East Asian cultures, but not wanting to lump them together in an Orientalist way. I think it’s one of the strangest aspects of my practice personally (and I don’t want to speak for you @Jamie, so maybe you could share your perspective on this), which is that I am trying to actively cultivate my ‘Chinese-ness’ whatever that might mean. Because the more I research, the more I realize it’s impossible to define. @Jamie, how do you feel that being an artist has changed your relationship to your heritage/ancestry?
I grew up in the suburbs, surrounded by cookie cutter houses, every house and yard similar to each other. With my mom migrating to the U.S. in the same year I was born, as soon as I reached elementary school, I could tell that the American value systems were so different from what I grew up with. As a child who wanted to fit in and who was often bullied for my many misunderstandings, I immediately drew away from my familial traditions and from speaking Cantonese. I truly wanted to disappear into sameness and match the hegemony of the houses on my block, despite the impossibility of it as I was always assumed foreign by strangers.
During my visits back to my parents after many years staying away from Southwest Florida and armed with my camera, I started to understand. The camera became a tool for me to be present during Chinese New Year, and notice how different my parents’ home (my childhood home) was from others. On one side was a pool and the other a lone tree, but in my parents’ yard, my dad built a two tiered garden, bookended by papaya trees and a koi pond shielded from the sun by a tangle of leaves. In the end, perhaps I would have made deep reconnections to my family without becoming an artist, but this “rediscovery” was a gradual realization aided by my drive to photograph my childhood memories. While familial traditions and reinterpretations are at the core of my work, I cannot escape the intersections of my queerness and the assumptions of how I perform gender and race. I also think about the transfer of knowledge and culture within East Asian culture and much of my work is critical of the conflation of “Asian-ness” and “Chinese-ness” within the western consumption of media and objects. In part, I can’t escape my ‘American-ness’ either or the fact, I’ve only been a visitor to my parents’ home country and my work is not just a reconnection but my own interpretation aided by my experiences within Chinese diaspora. My work are dreams of a safer future, a queer utopia, where play, joy and humor are prioritized over stringent patriarchal societal expectations. @Junli, how find joy in your work?
What you said about art making it possible to reconnect with your family and heritage really resonated with me, and I think that is both where I find joy but also struggle in my work. Joy because it has helped heal a lot of places within me that I did not even realise were damaged. And also made me proud of my heritage, because like you I grew up hating being different, and wanting to blend in with the other children in my neighbourhood. Similarly, I wonder whether I would have gotten this far without becoming an artist. I feel like becoming an artist, and being pushed to interrogate my own feelings (including the ugly ones) has really saved me emotionally. It is also a coming to terms with the fact that we are ‘visitors’ of the ancestral land, and will never know it the way that our parents do. I feel like most children of immigrants struggle with this in-betweenness, and feeling like we don’t belong anywhere. I find that to be the restorative part of my practice, that I am able to dream up a space and a home for myself, where I can draw on real histories but then blend them with my own imagination. And it makes me open to accepting all the parts of myself, both the Chinese-ness and the American-ness and all the places I’ve been, the stories I’ve lived. Realising that this can all be me, and i don’t have to declare an allegiance to just one thing. I think the moment I began seeing my in-betweenness as expansive rather than as just a dividing line, that’s when I began finding joy and restoration in my work. @Jamie What do you hope for in our work together, as collaborators, compared to your individual practice?
Looking back at our past collaboration in Penland, which for me feels like warm ups, sketches, and small iterations of what’s to come. It’s been two years and both of our practices have grown so much, expanded out and it’s been so exciting for me to see your work evolve. Both of our work comes from building new interpretations of Chinese diaspora, from bodily abstractions and absurdity. I want to see new worlds, playful and joyful, built from both of our perspectives and pulling from our shared but also different connections to our heritage. In a way, I want to create a new language with you.
Yeah, I love that. I feel the same, and really excited to see how our visual languages will combine and what kind of world we can build together.
May June July August September
Jamie
Translations
Jade = @Junli
This month I drove six hours from Tallahassee to Fort Myers with my spouse and dog to visit my parents for a very short weekend. We celebrated my dad’s Xth birthday.
The visit was short enough that I spent the little free time I had walking through the house and passing by all the photographs of my family, together and separately. I found the pictures in frames and flat under glass on the top of cabinets, my mom’s dresser, and hanging in bedroom walls. Some of the images are of days I remember, family vacations in Disney and Hong Kong and visits to Santa Clauses and Easter Bunnies. But there were a few I don’t remember: a polaroid of my mom in a restaurant’s kitchen - could this have been taken at Canton Restaurant, my parents’ former restaurant or an unknown place she used to work?
@Jamie,
You know, reading this made me suddenly realize something strange about my family - we don’t have any family photos on display. I think the only ones that have ever hung in our house as far as I can remember was one of my old school photos (I remember it clearly because my mom hung it in my bedroom - as someone who hates being photographed, this was a well-meaning but cruel decor choice). And I think there is a small photo of my mom and my step-dad’s marriage photo somewhere near their bedroom, it was propped up on a speaker last time I saw it.
But I react similarly, with curiosity and wonder, whenever I look through my parents’ old photo albums. I think it’s the trap of all children, that we forget our parents had lives before we were born. In my recent excavation through my mom’s photos, I was struck by how adventurous she looked in a few of the photos. And of course, how young - it’s strange to see our parents at the age we are now. I wonder how we would have gotten along if we were peers, and how different she might have been then. Isn’t it funny how familiar yet unknown our own parents can be to us?
That weekend, my mom also told me stories I hadn’t heard before. She talked about the first hurricane they went through without me. At that time, my brother was still in high school, but I had already left for college in New Mexico. The sliding door of their home ruptured from the force of the hurricane and my parents and my brother huddled in a hallway without windows, terrified.
These photographs I don’t remember coupled with stories from my mom during the time I’ve been away has made me realize how much time has passed and how much I’ve missed.
It reminded me how long it has been since I left my childhood home, 17 years ago. It has been 17 years since I lived in Florida and now I’ve moved back. I still don’t know how I feel about this.
My family moved into my childhood home 24 years ago. I remember my dad sleeping on the floor of the “new” house the day before we moved. He was warding off bad spirits from entering.
My mom migrated to the U.S. 36 years ago. My dad, living in the U.S. for several years prior, left Minnesota to meet my mom in Florida (he’ll never go back - too afraid of the cold). They lived in an apartment that I have no memory of, other than the photographs my father took. I was born months later in the same year.
My mom was 32 years old when she had me and when she moved oceans away from her hometown, Guangzhou, China. When I was 32 years old, I started grad school, leaving an office job in public service to invest in my art practice and career. At 32, my mom was faced with learning how to navigate a new country, new culture and a new language at the same time as becoming a new parent. At 32, I moved seven hours away from my partner and dog at the start of the pandemic before watching my body slowly deteriorate until I was finally diagnosed with an autoimmune disease right before my 33rd birthday.
When I first reflected on how both my mom and I made this huge change at the same age, I could only see how my decision came from a place of privilege. Now, I can also acknowledge that I had a different set of circumstances to overcome. She learned to navigate a new country; I relearned how to navigate my body within the context of my disability.
@Jamie,
I think about this a lot, the things our parents went through that were so different to our lives when they were our age. My dad likes to joke that I never would have survived if I were in that situation. In some ways, I think he’s right - at least the version of me now, who never had to struggle in that way. But I also think that adversity makes you pull through whether you think you can or not.
As you pointed out, we all have our own obstacles to overcome. I see my privilege, as well as how happy that makes my mom - that fact that I can enjoy all the things she never could when she was my age.
These days, I feel mostly gratitude, but when I was younger I had a lot of guilt as well. Especially when I was struggling with uncertainty over what I wanted to do in life, I fell into a long period of depression. During those times, my parents couldn’t understand why I was so unhappy - to them, I had everything: food to eat, a home, financial security, a great education. But all I remember was feeling so lost. It’s the privilege and burden of growing up here, when all your life you hear how anything is possible yet pursuing a dream means knowing what you want. And there is also the unspoken expectation that what you want should somehow validate the struggles your parents went through to build a new life here, so that you could grow up with those options.
The morning before we drove back to Tallahassee, I walked by my parents’ fridge and was surprised to see the family shield I created for an elementary school assignment held in place by a Ronald McDonald magnet. There was nothing else displayed on the entirety of the fridge; in the past it typically held printouts of directions to places or instructions on exercise and stretches with my mother’s handwritten annotations. Once, there was an article my mother’s English tutor found from a solo exhibition I had in Madison, WI.
@Jamie,
I love these unspoken displays of their pride in you. I think we talked about this in our last dialogue, the ways that love is expressed without language. Growing up in the culture that values positive affirmations, it can be strange to share those experiences with American friends. But we grew up decoding these expressions and can read between the lines.
I was struck by how young my parents looked, but I remember these clothes so vividly. When I think of my parents, I think of my mother’s floral patterned dress and my dad’s button-up. It was like a uniform they wore whenever they went out as a family unit.
@Jamie,
It’s funny but I don’t really remember any specific clothes my parents wore, which is strange because I’m sure they didn’t have that many when I was little. I suppose I can think of a similar ‘uniform’ to what you mentioned though - my mom wore a lot of blouses and longer skirts, my dad really liked polo shirts with trousers while my step-dad was more of a button down with a sweater vest combo. I do remember the things my mom loved to put me in though, and I think she took greater joy in dressing me than herself. But she has always loved to dress, and I definitely notice that when I look through photo albums. I also think about how her clothing has changed over time - when I look at her old photos, she was dressed much more conservatively. Now she loves bright colours and patterns, flowing shapes and feminine details like ruffles. I think about how clothing reflects our lives and feelings, and how much happier she is now and the way that translates into what she wears. I find a similar pattern in myself, and how much my clothing mirrors my current stage in life. I wonder what I will think of myself when I look back years from now, and reflect on this period of time.
Junli
Movement
Coral = @Jamie
I’ve moved a lot in my adult life - the longest I have stayed in one place since undergrad was for the three years of my MFA in Fayetteville. I graduated last year, then moved to Iowa City for a year, and this past week I’ve moved yet again to Williamstown, Massachusetts. I finished unpacking just a few hours ago (the last thing I put away were my socks).
I think a lot about how moving changes us, and what remains the same. It’s often said that we are different people depending on our surroundings, whether that is a place or people. I felt this most acutely when I was living abroad, but these days my movements are local, and to increasingly smaller towns. When I first left home, I was propelled by curiosity and exploration - I moved to Seoul for a year, then left to study at Oxford. I stayed in the UK for four years, and also lived briefly in South Africa as well as Italy. My parents moved a lot as well after leaving China - first to Wales for my dad’s PhD, then later Berlin, where I was born. They came to the US when I was a few months old, and I grew up in Chicago.
What motivates movement? As a second-generation Chinese American, I have never experienced the need to move away from something; my movement has always been towards something, whether it is adventure, education, or professional opportunities. I work hard, yet I have never experienced struggle the way my immigrant parents have. My mom will often hold my hands, looking at them and remarking how her hands used to look like mine before washing dishes in restaurants made her fingers swell until her rings no longer fit. I have one of her old rings that I used to wear everyday until it broke. It doesn’t even fit on her pinky anymore. I took it for repair once, but it soon cracked along the same fracture line. Metal seems impervious, but I guess it still holds memory.
@Junli, I feel the same way about my movement and about never experiencing the same struggles as my parents. Both of my parents worked in the restaurant business at one point of time or another. I used to answer phone calls as a kid, taking carry out orders for my parents’ restaurant and I’ve served from the time I could legally work into my mid twenties. But it was never the same as the long hours my dad would spend in front of the hot flame, in constant movement with a wok and a steel spatula. There were times, especially when I was a child, that I never saw him; he would leave before I woke and come home after 10 pm. Working in restaurants has changed his eating habits and has definitely taken a toll on his body. My dad has always been thin, but right before he retired, it felt extreme. It's been a few years since and he looks so much healthier now. I also think about my mom’s feet swelling from standing too long similarly to how your mom’s rings no longer fit her now. My mom and I share the same shoe size but she can never wear my shoes because of this.
Holding on, letting go
When we move, we carry our possessions alongside the identity of who we were in the place we just left. It’s how we introduce ourselves to others, and what we fill our homes with. As I unpacked the last few days, I didn’t feel at home until I had arranged and hung my artwork around the house as if reminding myself: this is me, this is who I am. Within the unfamiliarity of a new place, it can be comforting to cling even tighter to what we know. I think of what my parents might have held onto when they moved. They had few possessions, but instead carried with them language, habits, and rituals. I wonder what little things comforted them in the immediacy of the move the way that hanging my artwork does for me.
I also wonder what they had to let go of when they moved. The obvious one is comfort - of knowing their surroundings, of being able to speak the language, of understanding the culture they have entered. Whenever I moved abroad, I had the privilege of being able to speak English, which is now considered the ‘universal’ language. I also had the benefit of technology help me translate and navigate unknown paths. When my mom first left China, she couldn’t speak any English. Even today, she feels self-conscious about her English, and always asks me to help her when she has to make a phone call to contact a bank or some other business after she has exhausted all other options to email or live chat.
@Junli, my mom also still asks me often to help her with her English, but most of the time it’s the written form. She’ll ask me to correct her grammar and at times, rewrite her email or text so that it’s clearer. I’ve once had to call in for a doctor’s appointment (even though I thought hospitals are legally required to provide a translator??). l do this for her even though my brother lives 5 minutes away from my parent’s and I’ve, up until now, lived states and often, time zones away. Maybe it’s because I’m the eldest that I’m always tasked with this, but I also think there’s this duty that children of immigrants have to be their parents' constant translators. Being the first person in my immediate family to learn English, I’ve grown up calling utility companies and banks for my parents. It is still a privilege to grow up speaking English, but for me, I often feel the loss of my first language, Cantonese.
My mom is very shy and nervous about doing things on her own, which is why it amazed me to hear how she fought to stay in America when my dad decided to separate from her. Everyone expected her to bring me back to China, but she was determined to raise me in the US. Despite her uneven English, she persisted through interview after interview until she finally found a job in one of the research labs at the University of Chicago. At the time, I think she saw no other way and so didn’t have time to question her abilities.
@Junli, I love this polaroid of your mom. It reminds me of the polaroid I found of my mother this month. I’ll have to make some time to scan it and send it to you next time I’m there. I also think about how nerve wrecking interviews are, as we both just experienced it earlier this year. It must have been more nerve wrecking for our moms to have to experience a language barrier. My mom couldn’t stay in the restaurant industry, and worked towards getting her GED and then a certificate in accounts payable. She was also so persistent despite what she had to overcome and she was able to find a position at a resort, where she didn’t have to stand on her feet everyday, but could work in an office. I think there’s something to say about their resilience in face of no other options but to succeed.
I also think about physical possessions. Every time I move, I’m struck by how much I have. I think about how by nature, I want to grow roots and expand and nestle deep into a home, but being an artist requires the opposite lifestyle. One of the contradictions I face recently is my attachment to material items and my recent artistic research, which delves into Buddhism and impermanence. Yet I have been a lover of things since childhood. When I close my eyes, I easily conjure my favourite dolls, my little red boots, my treasured box of holographic Sailor Moon stickers. I’ve never asked my mom what her treasures were. What things did she bring with her when she left China that brought her warmth and a feeling of home in foreign places?
@Junli, my parents couldn’t afford a lot of material things for my brother and I, but the things that we had, I have such fond memories of. This is probably why I similarly have a hard time letting go of my personal possessions as well. This image of you, with one of your favorite dolls, reminds me of a photograph of me. I was either three or four years old, holding a stuffed bunny by its tag. I used to swear this was my first memory, carrying the bunny over to show off to my parents, but I also wonder if it's because my dad was always so quick with his camera. Perhaps, this memory only exists for me because my dad captured it.
May June July August September
List of things
Jamie’s List
Things from my mother and father
(from recent to past)
1. Frozen sliced mangoes from my family’s mango tree
2. Roasted duck and pork (my dad’s is the best!!)
3. Jars of broth for every ailment
4. Dried fruits, roots and herbs for broths I’ll never make (sorry, Mom)
5. Recipes, either spoken or more recently, handwritten
6. Vases that are still empty (and I’ve been scolded for not using)
7. Rice paddle
8. Dishes from my parents’ old restaurant (which closed due to a greedy landlord who then went bankrupt within a couples years)
9. Plant clippings from every visit I made back home
10. Vegetables from my dad’s garden
11. Chopsticks
12. Tea pot and cup set from my tea ceremony
13. Silk Pink bed covers gifted prior to my wedding (from a shopping tour of Beijing with other Cantonese speaking families that lived in Florida (it was so cheap because it was subsidized by the many shops we had to visit))
14. Rice cooker that has survived my undergrad years and three different out of state moves and still going
Junli’s List
Things from my mother (from recent months):
1. help with packing to move (upcoming - two weeks)
2. texts to check on me (have been feeling sick)
3. vitamins (coming in the mail)
4. futon for my new home
5. photos and stories from her childhood
6. candles (one of many habits she has picked up from me, but now she buys them more obsessively than I do…)
7. four bags of dumplings to keep in the freezer
8. my favourite eggs with bamboo
9. aged black vinegar (zhenjiang xiang cu)
10. seaweed salad and kimchi
11. cold medicine
12. my favourite chocolate truffles from Vosges
13. books from China for my research (requested via my grand uncle): a couple version of the Shan Hai Jing, a few art books, the Benjamin March book on orchid hands…actually these are from a couple years ago, but I still look at them often so I’m including them anyway.
14. a new stamp seal for my name, stone with a carved goldfish on top, also sent from my great uncle (sitting in a box in my childhood bedroom - maybe I’ll bring it with me? I had an old one, it’s in one of my boxes of art supplies, I used it for a project the first year of my MFA)
May June July August September
Intro Notes
Jamie Ho
Stories from our mothers
When my mom tells me things, she assumes a lot. She assumes I know - that everyone knows - a full database of her experiences and knowledge.
Last time my mom came to visit me in Houston, it was the beginning of spring. My aunt had just passed away. My mom, my partner and I sat around our dining room table with tea in our hands, trying to figure out the logistics of attending and then leaving my aunt’s funeral.
I asked, ‘what do we need to do when we get home?’
My mom responded, ‘we need a fire.’
When my partner didn’t understand why, my mom became confused. She thought he understood; she assumed that everyone performed this tradition, Americans included.
I knew we were going to jump over fire at some point.
Jumping over fire was to prevent bad spirits from following us home. I had participated in the same tradition, when I was 12 or 13, attending my grandmother’s funeral. My mother’s mother who I had only met once during my first visit to Guangzhou five years prior. I remember flames in a metal pail and my fear of catching on fire. I jumped as high as I could over it and then climbed up the steps of a bus that took us back to my uncle’s.
Two months ago, unprepared, we lit junk mail in a dirt patch on the driveway, using a translucent pale green lighter from a gas station we purchased on the way home.
The stories or rituals that my mother has told me are fragmentations. Despite this, there are a few things that I know.
I know that she has lost many siblings, both recently and in the past. The first one she told me about was her brother:
Not the oldest, who I met when I was 7 or 8, at his place of business in Hong Kong filled with phones and a soft leather couch. Or the middle brother who stayed in Guangzhou in a 2 bedroom apartment where I spent many days staring at his out of date calendars sitting on uncomfortable wooden furniture.
The first was the brother she lost to the ocean when she was about 16 years old. She told me when I was the same age. They went into the water together. In one moment -
Was it when she ducked her head under the water? Or was it when she swam back to shore?
- he was there and the next he wasn’t. He got lost and she didn’t.
She always considered herself a strong swimmer. When I was five, she tried to teach me how to swim, but I didn't want to learn from her. I wanted to take lessons at the public pool and learn with other kids my age but we couldn’t afford it. I didn’t understand at the time why she wanted me to learn and why she wanted to be the one to teach me.
My mother assumes I already know. That I understand all these histories and all the paths she’s already walked.
But maybe it’s me, maybe I can be too stubborn to understand what she is trying to tell me. But that stubbornness I have - I inherited from her...
I was born by the ocean; I still don’t know how to swim.
Junli Song
Stories from our mothers
I never knew much about my mom’s childhood when I was little, and it wasn’t until my later teenage years that I first began hearing small stories here and there. Even now, most of what I know are fragments of memories, and often I have hazy impressions of emotions and atmospher rather than concrete narratives. My mom’s childhood was shadowed by the death of her mom, my grandmother, when she was only five. That sadness has clung to her all her life, even though she’s generally a very happy and optimistic person.
There is an old black and white photo of my grandmother, and it has always been the image in my mind when thinking of her. I remember it very well because I made a drawing of it when I was eleven or twelve. It was the only photo of her I had seen until my grandfather passed away last summer, and my mom showed me some more photos that someone had sent.
When I asked my mom for copies of these photographs, she wrote me notes for each one: some simply factual (identifying the people and location), while others had small anecdotes. There’s not too many of them, about fifteen or sixteen, but within this grouping there’s a stark before and after marked by the passing of my grandmother. Most of the photos are from the before period. There are photos of my grandmother and grandfather when they were young newlyweds. Their love story was like something from an old romantic film: she was the campus beauty and he was on the path to becoming a renowned professor. My mom’s early childhood years were the image of a happy family life.
The split is marked by a photo taken on the day of my grandmother’s funeral. In her note, my mom wrote: ‘I have never forgot that day when we sat behind her coffin and was one of the worst day in my life. From that day on, Xun and I live changed for ever...’ It reminds me of the repeated refrain that runs throughout one of my favourite books, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy: ‘things can change in a day’ – and how the reverberations of a singular event continue into the present.
One of those aftereffects was captured by this poignant off-handed remark in one of my mom’s notes: ‘You can tell that Xun's clothes is so dirty and not one combed my hair.’ It made me think of how much care my mom always put into brushing and fixing my hair and dressing me nicely when I was little. Even though she had very little money after leaving China, she found ways to buy pretty hair pins, shoes, and dresses for me to wear. Hair and clothing, which are often dismissed as frivolous concerns, were the embodiment of a mother’s love for her and their absence in her childhood fueled her to provide an abundance of them in my own. It made me realize that, in a way, my mom has been trying to heal her childhood trauma through our relationship. It makes me think about how much we inherit from our mothers, whether we are aware of it or not.