RMIT Fine Art
(Honours)
Graduate Exhibition

Aluminium, wool, found object, graphite on paper, mother made bracelet, towel gifted by my father, ashes from incense, milk, 2024.

Evaporated Love (2024) navigates the contradictions of familial love shaped by the absence of a father figure. Through an installation comprising sculptures and drawings, it reveals both physical and psychological struggles to reconcile familial disruption with a fragmented past.

Throughout the process of sculpting and threading, it recalls and reimagines fragmented, buried, and altered memories of my father, who has remained emotionally and physically distant since | was ten, and rethinks his relationships with my mother, elder brother and me. This process unpacks the fallibility of memory and paradox of emotions, highlighting the fragile yet enduring nature of familial relationships and the painful process of confronting a restrained and unresolved love.

Kinships, marriage, parenting and the constrained expression of love within Chinese cultures are also examined through drawings, text and collection of found objects. It reflects on the questions and emotions an adaptive child has neglected or suppressed, questioning how parental influence, silence, and the passage of time shape our perceptions of love, guilt, and belonging.

In this exploration, the work holds emotional and cognitive conflict, embodying the intimacy and vulnerability in confronting memory loss and the struggle to acknowledge a love that was, is and will never fully be understood.