Chinese Password is an installation of my prints joined with regular household objects. It explores how identity is expressed and restricted in our digital age. It joins the aesthetic of the gift shop (what others might perceive as "chineseness") with my experience of my own Chinese identity, which I encountered through domestic family life.
This work questions how we (Chinese-Americans) perform our own identity and how we might be restricting ourselves in doing so. Our digital platforms cannot convey the whole picture, they cannot share the smells and the taste of our culture, they are biased in how identity is defined.
The prints are based on a particular experience I had trying to set a security question from one of my accounts. One of the questions was "What is the name of your maternal grandfather". I only know him as wàigōng 外公 (maternal grandfather).
Photo: Bassim Rifaï @pain_dure
Photo: Bassim Rifaï @pain_dure
