Ornament
Sanaa Lee
University of the West of England Bristol
Ornament draws together community and narrative, exploring how cultural identity is held and expressed within lived environments. The project began from Anne Anlin Cheng’s theory of ornamentalism, examining how Asian femininity has historically been framed through aesthetics, with Asian women often objectified as decoration or represented as the Other. Approaching these ideas personally, the work responds to cultural identity and ongoing stereotypes. Everyone photographed is either family or a close friend, photographed in familiar spaces. Growing up in the UK, my experience has been shaped by my Chinese-Vietnamese family and the journey that brought them here, after my mother’s family left Vietnam in the late 1970s.