Date of Award
Spring 5-31-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Photography
First Advisor
Laine Rettmer
Second Advisor
Foad Torshizi
Third Advisor
Daniel Heyman
Abstract
The father figure casts a long shadow—both a scaffold and a snare. Inherited silence, latent anger, and the fear of being seen are unspoken legacies that bind me. I move within a structure he built that promised protection yet enforced obedience. There, love was often inseparable from control.
This work emerges from the fracture between resistance and inheritance, between the instinct to escape and the compulsion to remain tethered. The paternal presence is no longer a person, but rather a system—an architecture of power and repression—that continues to influence my gestures, choices, and silences. Even distance fails to sever the thread.
Through image and movement, I trace a topology of estrangement—moments where conflict blurs into care and where rebellion becomes a form of devotion. The camera functions as an instrument of confrontation and inquiry. It does not seek to resolve the paradox but rather to dwell within it, exposing the invisible scaffolding of identity shaped by intergenerational force. This is not a return but a reckoning—a negotiation between presence and absence, love and rupture, structure and collapse.
Recommended Citation
Wang, Yuchen, "Where the Ocean Ends, The Mountains Becoming" (2025). Masters Theses. 1490.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1490
Creative Commons License
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