Jerry Li

Project

To Relive Old Dreams (重温旧梦) is an attempt to honor and reconcile the fading memory of my mother’s family. My great-grandparents were buried in an unknown mass grave in the outskirts of my ancestral city of Suzhou during the Cultural Revolution. Through the passage of time, my grandmother has forgotten where her older sister was buried. The city itself has transformed from its historic roots into a modern metropolis. As a diasporic descendant, I've realized that I am slowly losing my ways of connecting with my family history. Through self-portraits, portraits of my dwindling relatives, and the layering of archival photographs, I wish to restore the spirits of family back into Suzhou's land in both my search for my great-aunt's grave and exploration of the city itself. This project is also an attempt to shed light on the untold stories of every family throughout China who has had their family history suppressed directly or indirectly by the Cultural Revolution and the post-Cultural Revolution modernization of China. Just as the final resting place of my great-grandparents lay hidden under layers of soil, so is the long cultural history of Suzhou under layers of concrete and glass. The city is no longer a place where my family can reminisce. Through my large format landscape portraits, I try to freeze every detail of a story being left behind by society.