My hometown, Daqing, is a small city in Northeast China, bordering Mongolia and Korea. In the past, Nomads have inhabited this land. In 1959, a major oilfield was discovered in Daqing, and thereafter this city grew in prominence as the “oil capital of China”. My mother, a dedicated worker, contributed to this gigantic industry, by designing factory layouts for my hometown's sites.
Inspired by artist Odette London, I began to use my family photos archive as a resource to understand my mother's professional life as a civil drafter. Site Plan is a photo installation series with my old pictures of my mother printed on fabric and sewed over it with site plans she designed for my hometown city as a civil drafter. I used segments of the old photos, with no specific human features, trying to emphasize the sense of being in the city and the general perception of the past, rather than a specific time or place.
I found this a good entry point to explore both my family’s intergenerational trauma that’s rooted in the land of my hometown city, which can be traced back to the Sino-Japanese War, and the more generalized effects of societal factors on women’s
