Wen Hang Lin
"And I Wander" is an ongoing series that acts as a visual metaphor for my struggle to assimilate into American life as an immigrant from Taiwan. It captures the vast, luminous landscapes of the Arizona desert and the urban-dwelling where I call home for the past three decades. Those natural features, yawning blue skies, and lush yellow and green flora are dreamily reflected on the surface of a nebulous humanoid figure, which waxes and wanes in visibility between images: sometimes clearly differentiated against and occasionally hidden within its environment. Yet this chameleonic presence is never fully incorporated. Balancing the 'yang' of these landscapes' tranquil stillness is the potent melancholy 'yin' of this solitary figure: conveying my unreconciled yearning for a sense of belonging in America.
In this project, I cut out carnival mirrors to resemble my own silhouette and then placed them within the landscape to function as my metaphorical surrogates. A figure is concealed to varying degrees within each image, depending on its relation to the camera and immediate environment. This impression provides a visual analogy for my subjective experience.