As an immigrant, the question of my identity is a constant in my life. Late at night, when the world falls silent, I lie in bed, drifting: What if I were not 14,000 kilometres away but back home? What if my path led me to become someone else entirely? Yet, despite possibilities, my choices have unfolded into my life now: I am an immigrant living in New Zealand and an artist. I carry no regrets — only the quiet acknowledgement of how each decision has shaped me. In moments of solitude, I feel the weight of that journey, and sometimes, I yearn for my childhood, for the warmth of my grandmother’s care, for the comfort of the duvets she sewed by hand.
This yearning led me to create a duvet of my own, attempting to capture the craftsmanship that my grandmother once embodied. I sought to reconnect with her through the material and the moment of making, imagining myself having her hands — each stitch a quiet echo of our bond.
I took the duvet to the old Chinese miners’ camp in Lawrence, a place with the first batch of Chinese immigration history. There, I engaged my body in dialogue with the land. The place was no longer simply a physical backdrop but became a part of a living perception—a “lived space” where memory and place converged.
Curated by Caro Bell and Lucy Hill, this limited space at BellHill Gallery at Dunedin School of Art became a platform for me to explore the relationship between the duvet and its environmental space. I transformed the site into a digital reflection of contemporary dilemmas, juxtaposing the virtual dreams of today’s youth in Minecraft with the dreams of a better life once held by the first Chinese immigrant miners 160 years ago. This work is both a question and a reflection on how our dreams, past and present, shape the spaces we inhabit and how we carry those dreams across time, bound by the threads of memory and identity.
Was the dream you once had like the one I hold now? Mixed-media installation, 2024.
Eva During 伊娃卓灵 