“Excuse Me, But Where Do You Come From?”

Victoria Si Wah Dong

Victoria Si Wah Dong on: “Excuse Me, But Where Do You Come From?”

“Excuse me, but where are you actually from?” is a sensitive question for a lot of people, including the artist. Identity has always been a complex question, where no one’s identity is always a constant, but rather, a compilation of your past, present, and unpredictable future. The search of identity is:

“…a never-ending, always incomplete, unfinished and open-ended activity in which we all, by necessity or by choice, are engaged.”

— Zygmunt Bauman, Identity in the Globalising World

Living with a diasporic family coming from Guatemala, Hong Kong, and China, Victoria began the project by collecting and compiling a series of cultural motifs and private historical documents from the 1800s to 1900s from her cultural background as a way to understand her ancestry, global politics, and immigration history…