August 1, 1995. A date that marks a departure — the moment of going abroad, leaving home, stepping into a life that would be permanently divided between two places, two languages, two selves. This project is a personal narrative exploring what that moment means when viewed from years of distance: the courage of leaving, the grief of what's lost, and the identity that forms in the space between where you're from and where you are.
Every immigrant, every exchange student, every person who has left home carries a date like this — a before-and-after line drawn through their life. This project makes mine visible.
What if the most defining moment of your life is one you were too young to choose?
What if home is not a place but a date — the last day everything was whole?
I collected everything connected to that date and its aftermath: photographs, documents, objects from both countries, conversations with family about what they remember. The fragments were incomplete and contradictory — memory is unreliable, especially childhood memory. But the gaps and contradictions became part of the story, revealing how departure reshapes not just the future but the past.
The narrative couldn't be linear because the experience isn't linear — you don't leave home once, you leave it every day in small ways. The final form layers different timescales and perspectives, allowing the viewer to experience departure not as a single event but as an ongoing condition that shapes everything that follows.
Some stories can only be told by the person who lived them. The specificity of my experience — the date, the place, the sensory details of leaving — is what makes it universal. Everyone who has left home recognizes something in these fragments, even if their date and place are different.
The mixed media approach reflects how memory actually works: not as clean narrative but as a collage of images, sounds, textures, and feelings that don't always cohere but always feel true.
Creating this work surfaced the realization that leaving home isn't a moment — it's a condition. You don't stop leaving; you carry the act of departure forward into every new place, every new relationship, every language you speak.
Viewers with completely different backgrounds consistently found their own stories reflected in this one. The specificity of a single date — August 1, 1995 — paradoxically made the narrative more relatable, not less.
This project gave me the courage to bring personal experience into my design practice. Understanding my own story of departure — of navigating between cultures, languages, and identities — directly informs my empathy as a designer. I know what it feels like to be between worlds, and that perspective shapes how I design for diverse users.
Home is not a place — it's a date. The last day everything was whole.