Memories on Ginkgoes, 2024

Memories on Ginkgoes - Lucy Zhang Ginkgo leaves, thread, acrylic on plexiglass, fishing line, flashlights
Approx. 9’ x 8’ x 3.5’

My dad often tells me about the big gingko tree that used to grow in his family’s courtyard (it now grows on my mind). Physically separated from this setting, ginkgo leaves have become canvasses for creating my own stories about family and heritage. The leaves are sourced from different places I call home at the point of making this piece: Pitt’s campus, my apartment in Pittsburgh, and my parents’ house. The labor of sewing them together was embedded with a cultural notion of care, for something that will inevitably age and dissipate, something fragile that is like memory and also like identity. It has made me begin to think more deeply about this utopic idea of the motherland, and, in turn, the politics of romanticizing this. The paintings are both personal and generic, real and imagined depictions of stories from my family. As viewers cast shadows and interact with the piece, I wanted the projections to become ghosts of memories carried within/hovering above/projected onto the leaves.