Loneliness, is a universal theme in art with its many expressions and underlying causes a focus of exploration for individuals across space and time. As an international student identifying as a visitor from China, the solitude I encountered during my time in Toronto was surprising and intense. This sparked a profound reflection on the origins of this sense of loneliness within me.
My thesis reflects upon my personal experiences abroad as an international student to examine loneliness and alienation among individuals. I use photography and images as my main creative mediums. In the process, I capture photographs and document my observations, gradually producing visual works that portray the symbolic and actual landscapes that convey the sense of individual isolation within a cityscape, specifically downtown Toronto.
Throughout the creative process, I integrate documentation from my current residential environment, layering it over depictions of individual isolation and landscapes to establish a nuanced dialogue between Individual residential environments and urban landscapes. I discovered a close connection between my emotions and the images I captured, visualizing an archive of experiences of a diaspora in a foreign land.