Meng Jie
Qiyu Wang
Human legacy is often a privilege of the visible. While "important figures" are preserved in stone, ordinary lives—particularly those of women—face a quiet violence of disappearance. This project investigates how design and photography can construct a durable life archive for the individual.
Using the artist’s mother as a central case study, the project traces her transition from an independent social being with a professional identity to a figure increasingly overwritten by domestic roles. This shift reflects a broader social reality: the diminishing visibility of women as they are consumed by motherhood and time. If we do not actively interpret the traces of such lives, do they eventually vanish from collective memory?
Integrating photography, archival research, and book design, the project transforms fragmented personal testimonies into a cohesive narrative system. The project adopts the philosophy that every individual is a library containing singular, irreplaceable knowledge. By translating fragile, private memories into physical, printed form, the project moves from "my mother" toward "every mother," reframing personal loss as a collective inquiry into historical value.
The resulting archive functions as an act of resistance against the limits of time. It challenges the viewer to reconsider who has the right to be remembered and demonstrates the power of design to ensure that the "ordinary" is not only seen but preserved in its full, complex humanity.