Artist Statement_      Day After Days

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At first sight, as a volunteer visiting Kanghui Home of the Aged I believed that the environment was so bad that the seniors could barely live. However, when I got closer to their lives, I found a tremendous difference. Their overwhelming depression was not because of the mistreatment from eldercare or the Home of the Aged. Ironically, their relatives were the ones who gave them loneliness. According to the first rule from Kanghui, relatives were required to visit the elders frequently, which meant they didn’t. Even though some of their children came to visit every week, their stay only lasted for one hour or so. When one old lady invited me to her room just for a talk even though she could barely hear my voice, when two old men asked me to take a seat and stayed with them, I couldn’t help my tear dripping and had to halt the shooting for a moment. Reflecting back to our own living elders, we must question how much time have we spend with them? Reminding of my own grandpa whom I didn’t accompany with during his last days in the Home of the Aged, it inspired me to create the Day after Days project. This project documented the elders’ daily lives in Kanghui Home of the Aged, Beijing, propelling me to display their loneliness, real mental condition to the public. Family is the irreplaceable home for everyone should be understood and underscored after seeing this series.