Dreaming Home Returning

Dreaming Home Returning draws from artist Li Chen’s personal experience: after witnessing her childhood home reduced to rubble during urban renewal, she attempted to use dream re-entry as a portal to revisit it. The work delves into the unresolved emotions entangled with urbanisation’s impact on one’s sense of belonging by exploring the relationship between memory and dreams.

The Super 8 video, composed of three parts—or rather, three dreams—runs in a continuous loop, punctuated by the same line of text: “She realises she can no longer remember what her childhood home looked like. And the ruins become the home in her dreams.” In each dream, the female protagonist returns to an empty, abandoned village she believes to be her home. As she tries to connect with the ruins, events take an unexpected turn. A wall-sized photograph, in which the dream-video is embedded, suggests a deeper reality behind her amnesia.