我们玩耍的方式

艺术家自述

I was ten when I left China for Canada, but my childhood still lingers in the streets, schoolyards, and parks of Huizhou. The Way We Played is my attempt to revisit that time, through nostalgia, fragments, flashes of memory, and the lives of children who move through the same spaces I once did.

The images are candid, unposed, unstructured, just as memory itself. I photograph the parks where I spent entire afternoons, the school where I lined up each morning, the streets where we invented games. Some moments feel unchanged: the joy of play, the small rebellions, the quiet gestures of care between friends. But others feel more complicated. A child grips a toy gun with practiced confidence. Another plays a game using cigarette pack cards, mirroring a habit he doesn’t fully understand. These moments are what I call innocent corruption: the way children unknowingly engage with symbols of adulthood, eager to grow up before they realize what that means.

At the time, I never questioned these things. It was just play. But looking back, I see the complexity: how culture, media, and generational habits subtly shaped the way we played. In China, these influences felt distinct, embedded in everyday life in ways that now stand out starkly against my later experiences in Canada. The contrast is striking, and it makes me reflect on how much of childhood is shaped by the world around us, often without us realizing it.

The Way We Played sits in between innocence and influence, personal memory and collective experience. It’s an excavation of my past, but one that leaves space for the audience to find their own connection. Maybe in these images, they will see echoes of their own childhood. Or maybe they will see something unfamiliar, something distant.

媒介