For Elsewhere and the Olive Tree

Text/Ye Cheng

My work examines how urban interiors carry the memories of migration, displacement, and hybridity. Through sremembered landscapes.

These hybrid spaces reflect the diasporic condition of living between cultural frameworks—where the search for freedom coexists with a persistent longing for belonging. The series captures the contrast between two kinds of feelings: “l’angoisse” (anguish) and “la redousse” (redoubt): a sense of anguish and anxiety when faced with the harsh environment of the outside world, and a sense of security and comfort when protected by the strong walls of a fortress.

In the Memory Map series, I examine how daily objects: utensils, medicines, calendars, plants reconfigured into forms that blur the cultural boundaries and personal memories, the comfort and protection while the floating windows and stairs suggest the “play” of artificial hospitality, movement and broader world beyond. Interact to create a world suspended between the real and unreal, a narrative that carries the weight of migration and history.