Artist Statement The Mother of All Journeys, by Dinu Li, explores the memories of the artist’s 80-year-old mother, through a series of colour photographs, accompanied by family snapshots and his mother’s narration. Originally told as bed-time stories, her memories have since become Li’s memories.
Since 2001, Li worked in collaboration with his mother, using each other’s recollections of her memories as starting points. On their journeys, they have attempted to photograph the exact sites of her stories. Comparing the actual with the figments of their imagination, they have discovered old haunts transformed beyond recognition, and yet bewitched to find some places unchanged by time. The Mother of All Journeys triggers a sense of repetition and nostalgia, invoking glimpses of the epochs we live through.
Dinu Li’s colour photographs teases out fragmented moments in time, charting rural traditions in a 1920’s China and or communist ideologies during the late 1940’s. Spanning two decades from the mid 50’s, Li turns his attention to a Hong Kong at a state of transition, morphing from fishing villages into the beginnings of an urban metropolis. Under British administration, it was a time of sweatshops and western influences. And finally, Li focuses on Britain, from a family resettlement in the 70’s era of strikes and de-industrialization, through to the start of the millennium, of multiculturalism and globalization.
The Mother of All Journeys was recently shortlisted for the Rencontres d'Arles Contemporary Photography Book Award.
Captions
Dinu Li, The Mother of All Journeys, 2003, C-print, 3x3 m projection
Dinu Li, The Mother of All Journeys, 2003, C-print, 3x3 m projection
Dinu Li, The Mother of All Journeys, 2004, C-print, 3x3 m projection
Dinu Li, The Mother of All Journeys, 2005, C-print, 3x3 m projection
Dinu Li, The Mother of All Journeys, 2004, C-print, 3x3 m projection
Dinu Li, The Mother of All Journeys, 2004, C-print, 3x3 m projection
Dinu Li, The Mother of All Journeys, 2006, C-print, 3x3 m projection
Dinu Li, The Mother of All Journeys, 2006, C-print, 3x3 m projection
Dinu Li, The Mother of All Journeys, 2005, C-print, 3x3 m projection
Number of Images: One full carousel containing 80 slides (projector available on request)
