Description

The loss of a place raises questions of memory and identity. Departing from my childhood apartment in Shanghai, this work explores how a sense of home can be preserved once its physical site disappears.The apartment is shaped by two periods: the 1920s and 1930s, defined by cultural exchange, colonial influence, and social inequality, and the period after 1949, marked by ideological control and restricted individual expression. These conditions are embedded in its material environment of upholstered furniture, wood, silk, and standardized space. By drawing from both periods, I am not seeking to reproduce their visual language, but to locate a cultural continuity that persists across them. Within their contradictions, I search for shared values, gestures, and material sensibilities that connect rather than divide. The apartment becomes a site where these histories overlap, allowing me to explore how culture endures and transforms across political and social conditions.