2023

The Bridge We Call Home

Video Installation

Made in collaboration with the students from MBO RijnIJssel Arnhem
Commissioned work by Museum Arnhem, the Netherlands

This in-between bridge is their new home–a place where the past entangles with the present and where multiple identities coexist within oneself.

LI Yuchen made this work together with students from a class at MBO Kansrijk Rijn IJssel, on the questions of departure, loss, border and rooting. Li met them alternately at the museum and in their own classroom. Together they did creative assign- ments about how they see themselves and how they think they are seen by others in different con- texts. They also shared memories with objects and worked with masks as a symbol of home that one has to pack in a suitcase.

Li herself left China ten years ago. While still being strongly connected to her homeland during the years away, she also feels like an outsider in China from time to time. Yet her new environment is not entirely familiar either, or maybe it never will be. Inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa’s liminality and bor- derlands, Li identifies her lived situation as inhabit- ing a space in between borders, which is a shared feeling expressed by the students. This could be confusing but could also be advantageous and enriching.