ORCHIDS

A project dedicated to detailing both the intricacies and struggles faced by immigrants when having to assimilate under the Western context. Speaking on the difficulty in attempting to present and preserve one's own culture amidst the pressures of both assimilation and capitalist exploitation; exploitation of both one's culture, as well as the exploitation of labour of immigrants to uphold imbalanced structures of power within these newly arrived lands. How the subsequent victims of these processes are the next generation of children, as our parent’s time has been significantly dedicated to the pursuit of labour to survive amongst prejudiced power dynamics. Expressing the idea of how in the West, cultures become stolen, watered down, and sold back to the individuals and communities of these cultures under a Western gaze of fetishised stereotypes. Ultimately, leaving us, the next generation, with but shadows and desperate imaginings of our ‘cultures’.

Captured on Medium-Format film.