They say children don’t really look at their parents until one day, they do.

For me, that moment came late, this also became the beginning of my own scavenger hunt through lthe ens of a camera, archives, silences, habits, and beliefs passed down with unsaid words.

While going through old photographs, I found my father’s handwritten note on the back. That small discovery opened something in me. I began to ask questions of my father, the person who raised me and whom I thought I already knew.

In his words, he likes black and white because. People of his generation would say, “If not remembered in glory (white), then remembered in infamy (black).” To leave a mark meant everything. He wanted to rise, no matter the cost. Yet behind that strong will, I sensed a quiet restraint. He was trying to follow society’s expectations while also imagining a world where he could live as his true self. He seemed caught between ideals and reality.

By observing him, I began to see his colors. And in seeing his, I came to recognize my own.

I have always been drawn to human contradictions. These are the textures that machines might imitate but can never fully embody. I am, like him, made of unresolved colors. Dignity and rebellion. Tenderness and resistance. These are the hues I move through.

The exhibition is titled Scavenger Hunt. I have gathered what I could.

In one archival photo, I saw that my parents and I once smiled together, though I have no memory of it. That absence of memory made me wonder about the quiet forces that shaped our family.

My father tried to survive under a larger patriarchal structure. I grew up trying to break free from a smaller one–the family. In this way, our stories reflect each other, even if neither of us had the words to express it.

Perhaps this is why it is so difficult to truly look at our parents. We are unwilling to see them as anything other than what we need them to be. We worry that recognizing their hidden colors might unsettle the structures we rely on. Seeing them as full, fragile, ordinary people can feel like losing the frame that holds us.

But I am deeply interested in ordinary choices: the quiet ones, the ones made off-stage, when no one is watching. What I found was never whole, but it was enough to start seeing myself differently.

Bio

江麟冶 Linye Jiang (b.1988, Sichuan, China) is a lens-based artist currently living and working in Chicago. She experienced early silence surrounding familial queerness while growing up in Shenzhen, which underpins her exploration of gender roles, human complexity, and the intersection of societal culture with the personal. Her work dismantles hierarchies within photography through the integration of personal narratives, sculptural forms, and performance. She has exhibited at Dittmar Memorial Gallery, Northwestern University; the Chinese American Museum of Chicago; the Gene Siskel Film Center; Zhou B Art Center; and A4 Contemporary Arts Center (China). She has participated in the Wassaic Project residency. Jiang is a recipient of the Ignite Fund Chicago and 3Arts (2024), the Angela and George Paterakis Scholarship (2023), and the Vivian Maier Scholarship (2022). She holds an MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.