Your Home is Yourself (2025)

Since contemporary art increasingly emphasizes emotion, I began to ask myself: must a self-portrait always depict the physical self? Could it instead be a portrait of emotions? If emotions are shareable and transmissible, can others perform "me" within the spaces where those emotions once emerged?

I also question the boundaries of photography and explore how it intersects with other media. Can a photograph become part of a narrative, a performance, or an installation? Through this project, I challenge the conventional definition of the self-portrait.

As an environmental scientist, my research has required me to move across countries in response to global environmental challenges. When I was younger, this mobility felt exciting. But over time, the excitement gave way to loneliness, a persistent sense of dislocation, and a quiet anxiety about the future. I began to wonder: if everything I own fits into three suitcases, then what truly belongs to me? What is home? After years of reflection, I’ve come to believe that home is not a fixed place, nor even a specific relationship—it is simply who you are, wherever you are.

In this project, I invited fellow scientists who, like myself, navigate borders in pursuit of shared goals. I brought them into spaces where I had once emotionally inhabited, shared personal stories with them, and asked them to perform as me. In their performances, I saw myself reflected. And in that moment, photography became both witness and medium in this evolving self-portrait—one without my physical presence, but no less personal.

The choice of medium became essential to my expression. I work with a 4x5 instant film format for many reasons. The large-format camera, a vintage Graflex, demands slowness and care—each shot becomes a ritual, not just a record. This camera, with its history and presence, becomes less a tool and more a witness. Models, unfamiliar with it, tend to treat it with curiosity and respect, creating a space where performance can naturally unfold. It is also because I move frequently between countries, traditional film development and darkroom print became impractical. Instant film offered a way to respond to that constraint—an immediacy that mirrors the emotional intensity of the moment. But I did not choose the familiar Polaroid. Instead, I selected Fuji Instax—a format often associated with friendship and casual memories, not art. This allowed me to explore the tension between intimacy and artistic intent. Emotion, not lighting, became the central concern. These images, made without studio precision, are closer to the environment where emotion actually occurs.

This work was also created during a time when I was rethinking my career. Globally, faculty positions are becoming increasingly scarce due to declining birth rates and shrinking academic opportunities. Besides, a new challenge is that my VISA does not allow me to be both a researcher and a self-employed artist. So I have to stop taking art as my second career. I was deeply upset, but it also led to an important realization: I don’t have to be an artist to make art, and I don’t need to be a researcher to do research. Both of them are hobbies that are rooted in curiosity, critical thinking, and the way I relate to the world. Art, for me, is a way of living before money, and an act of meaning-making. So, I created this self-portrait without myself, as a response to my current challenges.