Taiwan is a series of photos taken in the country over the span of two weeks in November 2023.

Taiwan, where my family is from, is a country whose people have long endured struggle. First as a colony of Japan, then as its forced transformation into the “Republic of China,” Taiwan has been subject to autocratic rule for the better part of the last century.

Taiwan now exists as a liberal democracy. 

It still does not truly stand on its own two feet. 

The small island is caught in a struggle between the two largest world powers - the US and China - its very existence contingent on the geopolitical relations between these two nations.

Having so long been denied their autonomy, Taiwanese people are still collectively searching for a sense of identity.

The continual search for identity mirrors my own experience as a Taiwanese-American who was born and raised in the US.

There is a splitness, a shifting multiplicity, a disquieted sense of being in existing as both Asian and American. Never fully one or the other. 

There is an inner yearning. A desire for wholeness to contain the affective weight of history spilling forth from the self. 

In truth, it may never be fulfilled. Though perhaps that’s true of everyone.