Before Me, My World
Yiwan Ji
Before Me, My World is a three-part publication that explores identity through what exists prior to personal memory, across the scales of city, family, and self.
The first book, Before Me, My Home City, traces the transformation of Shanghai through cartographic narratives prior to 2004, revealing layers of urban, political, and social change. For me, a native of Shanghai, these materials offer a way to encounter the city beyond lived memory, reconstructing a personal understanding of its evolving identity.
The second book, Before Me, My Family, shifts to an intimate scale, focusing on my parents, their childhoods, individual life paths, and the circumstances that led them to meet, fall in love, and marry. Through collected and scanned photographs, the book reconstructs a visual narrative of lives that directly precede, and make possible, the author’s own existence.
The third book, Before Me, Before Memory, turns inward to examine a self that exists outside of recall. Before memory is formed, traces of identity already emerge, through stories told by others, recorded images, and institutional records. These fragments preserve moments that cannot be accessed directly, forming a version of the self that exists beyond conscious memory.
Together, the three books construct a layered understanding of identity, not as something solely remembered, but as something shaped by what came before, what surrounds, and what remains unknowable.