“For You I Will Be an Island” is a photographic series that documents my personal journey of reconciliation with the Yangtze River, exploring relationship between displacement, loss, and belonging through visual expression of memories and technology. I grew up on the banks of the Yangtze River. The Yangtze River, often referred to as China’s “Mother River,” has nurtured me. However, it was my worst nightmare as well because it flooded every year, forcing my family to gather our household belongings and flee from the village where we lived.
In this project, I used AI as an experimenting tool, combining with memories from my childhood, to create a series of visuals that imagine how my hometown and the Yangtze River may look like in the future. I printed them out and hung them on a stand. I also recollected the household’s items that my family and I would normally take with us when the river flooded in the past. I photographed myself with these artifacts and the AI-generated visuals in front of the Yangtze River.
After taking a portrait beside the river, I placed my household objects in front of the AI-generated landscape and photographed them again. These images recall the tradition of still life painting and refer the scenic backdrops of early studio photography and cinema, devices once used to construct narratives and evoke imagined landscapes, transporting audiences to distant locations, imaginary worlds, or sublime settings that feel almost unreal.
AI assisted me in imagining how my hometown would look like in the future. However, the AI’s outlook on the future doesn’t seem optimistic, consistently depicting my hometown being buried in water or destroyed by raging waves. During my exploration along the Yangtze River, I noticed some locations that resembled the AI photographs, which surprised me at times.
The household items are more than just memories of my home I lost to the River’s floods. They have become symbols of offerings, a sacred tribute to the Yangtze – the Mother River – in hope of a better future. The project’s title, “For You I Will Be an Island,” suggests the nurturing essence of a mother. During my voyage down the River, I often came across graves that were submerged in the water, looking like lonely islands. I sincerely hope that the Mother River will always be there for us, providing a safe island for not just her human children, but also other species to survive, regardless of what our future may hold.
I recognize that the AI-generated visuals evoke debate, yet they reflect our complex relationship with technology and nature—the paradox and contradictions of imagining futures through unstable technologies. This tension itself becomes part of the work: a reminder that the tools we create to envision change are entwined with the very systems that shape, and sometimes endanger, our world. Rather than rejecting these technologies, I seek to question how we might engage with them more consciously—how coexistence might emerge through awareness, restraint, and care. By embracing this contradiction, I seek not resolution but for reflection—a space to imagine more balanced ways of living with the technologies that define our time.
This series also has augmented reality (AR) component. When one downloads an app and uses a smart phone or tablet to point at the photograph, one will see the flood becoming alive, rising, flowing, and moving.
This work was exhibited at Grand Palais as part of AI Action Summit Paris 2025, please see the documentation here. This project also has installation components, please visit exhibition documentation here.
I’d like to express my appreciation to The Canada Council for the Arts for its generous financial support, my photographer, Zen JinWen, and my family support and helps.
