‘Words From Dad’ is an ongoing series that explores my Dutch-Chinese heritage and identity. With the use of archival images from my own family albums, I trace back my mixed roots through my grandfather’s life stories as told by my dad.

I am originally from The Netherlands. I am Dutch and a quarter Chinese. My Chinese roots come from my father’s side of the family. My grandfather Tek Suan Chen was born in 1910 in Wenzhou, China. He was a dignitary and the Chen family were judges and landowners there. Everything had been taken away from them, their possessions and their lives. The whole family was killed by the communists during the Mao Revolution. My grandfather was the only one who survived, together with his teacher and cousin Bun Chen. He was just 23 years old when he fled, as a student, from Wenzhou to Europe, via France to Germany. Due to the political consequences of the war he eventually ended up in The Netherlands where he met my grandmother and opened the first Chinese restaurant in the city The Hague. This then became the two biggest and most important things in his life: his restaurant and family. Even though I have unfortunately never met my grandfather in person — since he passed away before I was born — I have always had a strong interest in the stories my dad told me about him.

The manufacturing and application of analogue photomontage techniques such as collage and weaving is used metaphorically to visually portray my grandfather’s experience of adapting to a new (Western) culture, as well as my dad’s multicultural upbringing. In a way, I literally weave the different cultures and experiences together, creating a fusion of their Chinese and Dutch identities. Through stitching different parts of several images together I furthermore depict the fragmentation of my family memory and the continuous retelling of my family history; the stories that are passed on from one generation to another. Ultimately my grandfather’s testimony was first translated by my dad in his own way and in his own words, then by myself, and finally, by the viewer. The original plot and details become lost in translation, and through photomontage I further abstract it, using the pictures themselves as a material that can equally be manipulated. In ‘Words From Dad’ I explore this concept of interpretation and continuation, not only through what I see in the images from my family albums, but also through how they make me feel.