Around the Table

Animation, Printmaking and Installation

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Preparatory Work & Visual Experimentation

I used mapping as a method of documentation and built links between their personal stories. Digital collage allows a simultaneous and layered exploration of time, place and movement. I used a topographic approach for their individual timeline maps, where I weaved fragments of related places and archive images to generate new personal geographies.

Printmaking and Text

Developing the notion of mapping, I made a series of monoprints that examine how roads resemble rhizomatic roots as they connect people and places.

I charted the natural terrains of related areas using text. The Chinese text is taken from corresponding conversations with my grandparents and is translated.

Menus

The final installation is accompanied by a book work ‘menu’ created using lino and digital print, which depicts foods that are special to them and represent their experiences. It acts as an atlas and allows visitors to unfold its pages due to its concertina format. The lino print cover is composed of four bowls with etched geographies of each location, and Cirebon clouds, a traditional Indonesian Chinese pattern that overflows.

Final Animation and Installation

Around the Table is a projection installation of an animation that explores and documents the migration stories I have collected from my grandparents. It shares their journey of finding a sense of belonging in different places where they call ‘home’, and draws connections between time, place, and memory. Since the dining table is an important space for storytelling in my family, the installation setup recreates the scene of a family meal and integrates the subject of food and culture. 

The animation focuses on their migration journey and the personal, social, and political reasons that prompted their relocation, from Indonesia to China, Hong Kong, and Canada. With the tablecloth as a tapestry, reinterpreted traditional textile patterns from each location are combined with subjective cartography to illustrate the stories. 

The tabletop projection invites visitors to sit down around the table to watch and listen to the stories unfold. They take on the role of the listener, whilst I narrate as the storyteller and translate my grandparents’ voices who speak in Cantonese.

So what is 'home' to you?

Through this project, I hope to encourage the participants to also collect stories from their family and remind them that simple moments of sharing are extremely valuable.