In the photographic series In Back to Nowhere (2020), Wenxuan Wang selectively encapsulated areas where she had lived – mainly places where a sense of familiarity presided. Through her photographs, the viewer finds places which have been abandoned or rebuilt due to gentrification, as if everything that had been solid had vanished. Recognizing our own limitations of remembering past events, Wenxuan Wang’s photographic series aims to explore how the nesting of family archives and environment exposes the strangeness and loss of control of a sense of boundaries in an oppressive environment. The photographic work is a proximity that creates a survey of several locations, families, and persons and ultimately showcases a questioning of how we experience and remember. By destroying the images as a means of reflecting on family history and addressing psychological issues, In Back to Nowhere smudge the intersection between illusion and memory. Hereby, the images begin to disintegrate, revealing a landscape inhabited by ghosts of the past. A false emotional attachment that in reality is an inward questioning of how to escape the barren emptiness that hides behind the curtain of remembering.


By Nikolaj Ahlefeldt