74 pages, edition of 50 copies, smyth sewn, hardcover
This project began in 2022, at a time when the fear of losing my father clung to me more intensely than ever. I’ve carried fears about death since I was a child—not my own death, but the death of those I love. They’re quiet, creeping in unexpectedly, sometimes so strongly they feel suffocating. I imagine those deaths, without knowing when they would come. Thinking about how I might face them, or, to be honest, whether I would have the courage to at all. It’s a fear of how time moves, how everything around me shifts. It happens suddenly and overwhelmingly, just like it does for many others. It is told from the point of view of someone young, slowly coming to understand what “family” truly means.
The series explores the dynamics and complexity of family relationships. As someone living far from home, family is a relationship that stays with you—regardless of its imperfection, it remains. Where immigrants like us are interdependent on one another. They rely on each other to live—from daily routines to the deepest, most private sorrows of each family member. This reflection becomes even more apparent in our life in America, where my parents and other immigrant families have only their children as their source of joy and emotional support.
family acts as a reflection of one's identity and background, reflecting parts of ourselves we might not always see. It is not only about human relationships, whether bound by blood or not. Family, in its essence, is made up of emotions that are difficult to express, of contradictions in each individual’s thoughts, and of feelings that overlap and collide. A place we run to when we're most fragile, wanting to escape from it because of the pain it holds. Although this project is a letter to my parents and older sister, it became a tangible object for many others to reflect their feelings—an ongoing conversation that can offer empathy, a form of comfort with lingering fears, with changes, and a reminder of lost memories. It is both a record of what was and a recognition of what may never return.
