How to Disappear When No One is Looking

By Holly Chang

How to Disappear When No One is Looking is a meditation on place, memory, and kinship. The project centers recently found photographs taken by the artist’s late uncle during a trip to Hong Kong and China in 2003. Though China and Hong Kong are places that Chang is connected to ancestrally, she has not travelled to either. The photographs document places that her relatives knew intimately but remain unfamiliar to her.

In this project, Chang affixed the images to a sheet of construction paper and invited individuals of the Chinese diaspora who had traveled to China or Hong Kong to respond to the images by identifying the locations within them and transcribing their memories on the borders of the surrounding paper.

Through the eyes and recollections of strangers and friends, the sites are animated for the artist, connecting her in more fulsome ways both to the locations and relatives whom she can no longer question.

The project, at once participatory and archival, is also a reflection on the role that community can hold in constituting one’s sense of identity and belonging.