Halfway Seen Halfway Home 半窥半归
2025
Multichannel moving image
Dimensions variable
Halfway Seen Halfway Home 半窥半归 examines my identity as a first-generation Chinese-Australian hybrid identity, an identity shaped by migration, memory, and the ongoing negotiation between two worlds.
The project began with a question posed to me during my PhD confirmation: In what ways can I articulate the Chineseness of my identity? I didn’t know how to respond at the time. But when I had the chance to return to China, I decided to search for an answer.
Guided by the idea that what draws our gaze reveals who we are, I wandered and filmed intuitively, hoping the images I captured would reflect something of my inner self. Drawing on methods of video ethnography while critically reflecting on its colonial roots, I positioned myself as both insider and outsider — close enough to understand and empathise, yet distant enough to see differently. This double perspective reflects my condition of hybridity.
The project shifted when I learned my grandfather had become seriously ill. I travelled to my hometown to be with him, sitting by his side as he slipped in and out of consciousness. Memories of our past resurfaced, and I realised much of what I had filmed mirrored the things we used to do. What began as a search for identity became an act of pilgrimage — a search for a home I once knew, and a self I thought I had left behind.
Suspended between a former homeland and a present place of belonging, these moving-image works speak to the liminality and incompleteness of the first-generation immigrant experience, where home is both familiar and foreign, ever-present yet always just beyond reach.
Halfway Seen Halfway Home 半窥半归- a preview
Exhibition view （Supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants）