Larry Li

"This painting consists of an image transfer of an old family photograph of my father’s family. My father is to the very right, split off physically through the material process of the transfer to represent his immigration to the United States, the only one in his family to do so. In the center is his older brother, my uncle, and my grandparents to the left and right of him. The oldest of the three, my father’s sister, and my aunt, is to the very left. I was able to obtain this photograph during my short visit to my grandmother's house in Zheng Zhou, Henan, China, during a week-long hiatus at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel. This small break from the residency was vital to my being, allowing me to reconnect with my extended family and the city of Zheng Zhou, a home realized through only inheritance. The bottom half of this piece collages a cropped reinterpreted painting of a farm worker harvesting their grown corn, from an old Chinese propaganda poster, with the characters of Zheng Zhou overlaid, stenciled on through molding paste. These different elements collapse historical samples, cultural iconography, and personal artifacts into a piece that both archives and repurposes my familial relics into a personal narrative of home. I chose this piece to leave as a trace because it was in the true sense a piece of me left at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel." (Larry Li, 2024)