Kaixiang Zhang
Upstream
archival inkjet print on Awagami Kozo, archive sleeves, book tag, ring binders, fishing lure, and snail shell
30.5 ×
35
×
5 cm
In the summer of 2024, I returned to Wenzhou and swam with my family in the Nanxi River, capturing the photograph that anchors this piece. While the fullness of childhood becomes increasingly difficult to reconstruct as time passes, fragments of the past often flash back involuntarily, sudden and acute, thrusting me into a specific day or place where the raw sensation of the moment is entirely real, even if the surrounding context remains gone. When we attempt to cast our awareness backward and journey upstream against the current of time, memory reveals its true nature. It becomes a series of disjointed, shimmering glints of light dancing upon an elusive river surface.