Touch on Your Shoulder
Touch on Your Shoulder is a conversation with my deaf grandmother and a story of family, communication, and disability. By getting in touch with her life, this project also investigates the inner side of disabled elderlies in China. This project is a mixed-media body of documentary work that uses images, installations, text and a photo book. All these media attempts to explore the relationship between soundlessness and visual language from the daily elements of my grandmother’s life and try to construct a silent world from my grandmother’s daily perspective for the audience to feel more about the elderly deaf community.
Me and my grandmother have a strong family connection, but I still felt an intangible sense of alienation separating my grandmother from the family and society. It is sad that people often don’t understand some of her behaviors because of her disability. However despite the occasional misunderstandings, her life is still going on. She tried her best to live happily, even though sometimes loneliness and alienation also occur to her.
︎ Video of the physical photo book
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她的世界是静悄悄的。
The world is quiet for her.
The world is quiet for her.
不被理解是时常发生的事。
Not being understood is something that always happens.
Not being understood is something that always happens.
但幸运的是，障碍似乎没有完全切断我们与她之间的纽带。
But fortunately, the barriers don’t seem to sever the bond between us and hers completely.
