Depart On Silent Wings

Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s reflections on the fluidity of identity in The Waves, Depart On Silent Wings begins with my mother’s perspective as a hearing-impaired individual. It revisits identity through the intimate space of the family.

Through photography and moving images, I search for her traces within domestic space: butterfly stickers on walls, butterfly-patterned curtains, orthopedic supports hidden in closets, and fragments of wedding photographs wrapped in plastic film. These symbols embody her strength, sensitivity, and complexity, while revealing the subtle distances, forms of care, and unspoken tensions that exist within family life.

The work considers what is lost in the translation between sign language, spoken language, and familial communication. In this process, meaning does not always arrive fully; it can become delayed, simplified, or misunderstood. These gaps in communication create subtle forms of distance, where intimacy is accompanied by loneliness, and care is shaped by what cannot be fully expressed or received.