Family of Strangers
Growing up as an only child in both Malaysia and The Netherlands, I didn't see people in my family who looked like me.
For this project I took to the streets and asked over 50 people, who looked similar to me, to participate in a photo series which I presented as my family of strangers.
I wanted to understand how important visual representation was to each of them and how they felt about their cross-cultural identities, by exploring what it means to be "mixed".
PHOTOGRAPHY, RESEARCH & GRAPHIC DESIGN / Jowi Len Kemper
September '18
I approached complete strangers on the street and invited them into my living room where we posed as an ordinary family. The process was so weird yet somehow also very comfortable, as if we already shared a certain understanding. Not a single person I approached declined to have their picture taken.
Family of Strangers was an attempt to create better representation and understanding of Cross-Cultural identities. This liminal identity can still be confusing if asked to conform to a Mono-Cultural environment, where do you belong if you can fit in everywhere and simultaneously nowhere?
The result was a research conclusion that led me to believe that the value of Cross-Cultural identities lies in the ability to code-switch, a skill we desperately need in our ever-globalizing world.
The results were displayed during an expo at the Willem de Kooning Academy of Arts in 2018, I asked visitors to find complete strangers who they felt looked like them and pose as their own Family of Strangers. This allowed for conversations to open up about identity, belonging and representation.
