Informed by notions of fantasy and the imagined, ‘in dreams I wonder of you’ contemplates the illusionary perspectives the west shares of Asian women. Underpinned by writings of imagined identities and colonial structures, the images consider how absence is associated with the identities South-East Asian women. Though wider conversations of orientalism and Asian representations are significant to the body of work, the images remain an intimate portrait of the relationship between Serena and her mother; between herself and her mother’s land. Through family archive, still life and portraiture, the images attempt to speak to the distance and absence that surround Serena’s understanding of her Mother’s life before she immigrated to the UK. The work attempts to bridge gaps between the past and the present, between illusion and truth.
