MEMORY: FORGETTING HERITAGE, REMEMBERING CHILDHOOD, & IMAGINING NOSTALGIA IN CHINESE ADOPTION

Sometimes, memories come back to me in dreams. Other times, dreams come back to me in memory.

Medium: Installation, C-prints based on fine-tuned image model
Tools: Python, Stable Diffusion

Shanghai, China, Fall 2023

This project is an autobiographical photo essay reflective upon how Chinese adoptees construct memory, recount early childhood, and imagine becoming. I trained an image-generation model on a dataset of my own family photos captured on film during my family’s adoption trip in 2003. I then synthesized new photos that embody the fragmented, broken, and lost memories that arise from adoptees' often turbulent beginnings, rewriting what nostalgia means for me.

Full documentation

Hi, I’m Phoebe.