Giving birth to a boy is seen as luckier than to a girl. Before my four older sisters were born, my mother was already under the pressure of bringing a baby boy into her new family. My sister once told me, that a couple of hours before I was born: my grandmother told my sisters that if the baby were to be a boy, they get to leave the hospital and go home early. If not, they have to stay at the hospital with my mother. After hours of waiting, from close family to distant relatives, everyone had prayed that I would be born a boy. Friday evening, September 13th, 2002 in a local hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam, my mother gave birth to a baby girl. To this day, I believe those prayers made me who I am today.
As I began my investigation, I chose to explore my identity, and how my expression or behaviors differ completely from how my mother pictures and wanted me to be from the minutes after I was born. I chose this series of prints to describe what the co-existence of the “girl” and the “boy” looks like. Each print shows the difference in how both the “girl” and the “boy” interact separately and with each other.
I chose to let myself be physically vulnerable and uncomfortable in specific shots. I tried to be as feminine as I could in the blue dress and in my mother’s yellow dress, which I stole from her. Using the skills I learned from working on theatrical productions, I designed dramatic lighting on stage. In the end, each print fits the puzzle, they tell the beginning of my story.
