Sowing Rice with Salt

“Sowing Rice with Salt” explores how immigration affects the relationship dynamics between generations, particularly its impact on the younger generation. This exploration occurs between an archival image of an immigrant parent and an interpretive recreation of the archival image with the child. This image is accompanied with the child’s written reflections on their relationship to their parent and ancestral culture. As a child of immigrants, I often weigh the question of how children of immigrants can reconnect with a familial history and culture that they are spiritually, but less physically, connected to? Growing up, I felt isolated in my exploration of this question and my coping with these losses. “Sowing Rice with Salt” sheds light on the interconnected struggles of children of immigrants through exploring the most formative and intimate, yet often strained, relationship. By visually placing the child in the shoes of the past version of a parent, the adjacent images devise a visual bridge where the child can empathetically imagine their parent’s past, suturing the gaps which arise from diverse upbringings, traditions, and hardships across diasporic landing points.