How do hubris, neglect, remorse, trauma, or hope influence memory and the recording of history? Questioning concepts of origin, authenticity and processes of remembering and forgetting, I set up a dialogue between objects of uncertain provenance/elusive origins (from CU Art Museum’s collection) and images depicting my family’s history. While I feel encumbered by objects, I value their significance, partly due to the fact that my parents and grandparents shed or lost most of their belongings due to political events that forced them to move across vast geographies.

The physical thread throughout egg MUSEUM is a series of egg tempera studies that convey my perspective on family history. These studies combine imagery inspired by a small black-and-white photograph of my mother and grandmother, and a pair of hand-forged scissors passed down through generations. The hands that I depict in the egg tempera studies, showing the various uses of the scissors, are interchangeable between my grandmother’s, my mother’s and my hands. At times, my hand replaces my grandmother’s, tenderly brushing my 8 year-old mother’s hair from her eyes.

The egg MUSEUM is dedicated to my mother, Chia-chi Chen, whose love for her family infuses this work.