Sonder

Sonder explores masculinity through the lens of domesticity, focusing on the relationships between male family members and the spaces and objects that shape their everyday lives. Set between London and Taichung, two culturally distinct cities that have shaped my own identity. The project examines how Taiwanese and Asian masculinity is expressed, negotiated, and reimagined within the family home. Often coded as a feminine space, the family home contrasts with traditional masculine domains like workplaces or sports fields. By centering the domestic sphere, the series challenges these binaries and reveals how care, intimacy, and vulnerability can exist within male relationships behind closed doors. Blending documentary and staged approaches, I worked collaboratively with multiple families of Taiwanese & Asian heritage, using the home as a stage to explore the line between the natural and the performed. Everyday objects, clothing, and gestures become vessels for personal, familial, and cross-cultural dialogues. Through this, Sonder invites reflection on how masculinity can be soft, relational, and emotionally expressive. The title "Sonder", the realisation that each passerby lives a life as vivid and complex as your own, encapsulates the project’s ethos of universality and shared human experiences, emphasising how personal stories resonate across cultural boundaries and invite collective reflection.