Through You I will Feel
Mitchell Poon
Rhode Island School of Design
Through You I Will Feel is an installation exploring my family’s archive and my relationship with my ancestral heritage. An abstracted simulation of my childhood home’s dining room, it examines how revisiting the family archive can reveal new information not only about the past, but also about the present and the future. The installation consists of five works which integrate printmaking and print-adjacent processes: a set of four lithographic prints, cyanotype and natural toning on fabric, inkjet-printing on shrink plastic, UV dye-printing on polymer clay tiles, and digitally printed wallpaper. The title refers to the last lines of a poem my father wrote shortly before he passed in which he encourages us to live on in his stead. It serves not only as a reminder that he lives on through us, but that through the practice of art making and examining the archive, we can connect with something greater than ourselves.