Working with the medium of photography, I confront time, memory, love and loss in my own personal relationships.
My first project, in the calm of your arms, began as one of self-exploration by proxy of my intimate relationship with my partner at the time. I intended to explore the dualities present in our relationship: togetherness and tension in private and public spaces, individuality and similarity, and concealment and exposure.
In doing so, I found that the photographs also became a means of expressing my fears and reluctance toward being seen. Growing up in mainland China, I have been unable to broach the subject of sexuality with my conservative family. The narrative I depict in my photographs is one which I have actively kept hidden from them. When including myself as a subject, I often hide my face in shadow or turn completely away from the camera articulating my fear of being seen or found out.
The project concluded when my now ex-partner and I decided to end our relationship. I was lost not being able to photograph my ex-partner and I began photographing myself without her. Boredom, loneliness, and aimlessness prompted me to make photographs of myself and my surroundings. Photographs of myself and small moments and details in life became a way of understanding myself, chronicling my state of mind during this period of time. I was also questioning my own being. In the process of making self-portraits, I was intrigued by the strangeness of seeing myself in the photographs and I thought of how Sartre argues that it is when human beings are confronted with the gaze of the Other that we become aware of our own existence and the other’s.
After spending time working through these photographs, I decided to build on the images from in the calm of your arms with new photographs as I continue to explore my identity through new relationships, revisiting scenes from my childhood, and returning to China and my family. I then went on a journey of searching and reminiscing. Photographs from this period oscillate between loss and discovery, and meditations on the past while also looking toward future uncertainty and possibility. There are sentimental and seductive images from my newly emerged intimate relationship, mixed with photographs that grapple with our shared confrontation with uncertainty, wandering, searching, and longing. Through the making of the photographs, I tried to understand life at this time, at this age, and face the struggles that are often part of coming of age.
I am interested in the physical presentation of photographs. I experiment with how the manner in which images exist on pages and walls affects the viewer’s experience. Multiplicity, the pairing of images, the scale of and physical distance between images present new layers. My experimentation with these devices help me to convey my experience with time and memory.
Iris Wu, 2021
SPONSORED BY CHRIS HARRIS/REFUSE ORDINARY, DAVID HERRING/INNOVATIVE PAIN RELEASE, LOU ZELL/FILMORE FOUND, AND BRIAN FREER
Iris Wu 吴靖昕 (b. 1999) is a lens-based artist living between Virginia, USA and Guangzhou, China. Her current projects confront time, memory, love and loss in her own personal relationships. Most recently, she received the 2020 Society for Photographic Education LGBTQ Student Scholarship Award and her work was acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston for their permanent collection.