Her Love in the Fairyland

Medium: Photo Installation

Date: 8/2022

Showing this project was like airing tears. My friend Wen and I both grew up in families that lacked sex education, and before our bodies developed, sex was separated from us by a dreamy fog. Wen sat in front of her bedroom curtains on a humid summer day and told me about her experience of sexual molestation by her stepfather at the age of fourteen, an event that felt like watercress wrapped around her insides, her mouth already close to the surface but unable to cry out. It coincided with the time I was invited to photograph the wedding of a male relative. I had imitated adult sexual experiences with him as a child with a playful mindset, and when I recalled what I had done after becoming an adolescent I suffered from intimacy phobia for a while, unable to face my developing body, and only able to look at it honestly in the bathroom when the water vapor made me slightly hypoxic. At that wedding, all my memories of childhood sexual fantasies were conjured up.

I stayed with Wen this summer to heal each other and made the project with her candid presence in front of the camera. While photographing I was often removed from my identity as an adult woman, feeling the anxiety of the imbalance between my mental and physical development rates from a few years ago. The photographing was a healing process, and we became more and more able to be honest with our physical bodies and show our experiences as if we were undressing and bathing.