They are the Sweet Memories

They Are The Sweet Memories is a series of photographic collage works made with my parents' keepsakes such as old passports, a Chinese calligraphy manuscript, old textbooks, family photos, and an English-Chinese dictionary. The photographs depict my parents' journey from Hong Kong to Canada and also document their studies of English. My parents' souvenirs are further combined with childhood artworks I made such as an ink drawing and ceramic pots, and cyanotype prints I produced this year. These keepsakes link my memories and my parents' memories together and the combinations and compositions are intended to present my family's experience in a new way. Each item in the photographs contains and emits a sentimental aura of my parents' experience. They Are The Sweet Memories is a retelling of my family's background, one that encourages new layers of understanding and bridges communication between the barriers of deafness and language through the genre of family storytelling.