Where the wild birds go

• Main Author: Xu, Meicheng
• Other Authors: Oh Soon-Hwa
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Visual arts and music
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/168112
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Where the wild birds go delineates the lived experience of a first-generation Chinese immigrant, shedding light on the topic of Chinese diaspora. This body of work investigates the identity of an individual in today’s increasingly transnational, global society. Through this observation, I hope to rethink how we understand Home - such as through memory, movement, and imagination. Using the alternative photographic process; cyanotype, I replicate the interior structures of my childhood home in Fujian,China. Transporting them to me here in Singapore - a city where I call home but not quite. Historically, the diaspora referred specifically to jews and their exile from their historic homeland. By the end of the last century, the notion of diaspora was broadened and redefined to include many other groups. Prior to the first millennium A.D, the movement of Chinese outside of China was rare with only a few venturing out to the surrounding areas in the South China Sea. (wang 2000,3). This paper focuses on the research of the Chinese diaspora and what it means to be a Chinese immigrant in the transnational world today.