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“In the Abyss” explores themes of death and mourning within the lived experience, presenting artist Huang Yi-Hsuan‘s documentation of her grandfather Huang Shen-Yuan’s gradual decline due to illness. The series consists of Polaroid photographs paired with written records. At Huang‘s request, Feifei, their Indonesian caregiver, took daily Polaroid photos of the bedridden grandfather and recorded his condition in writing. Over time, they accumulated more than thirty photo-text records, ending with his passing.

After the funeral and Feifei’s departure to another caregiving position, Huang Yi-Hsuan moved into her grandfather’s home, transitioning from an external visitor witnessing a patient’s decline to an internal mourner immersed in overlapping fragments of life and memory within the same space. She reorganized all the collected materials, photographing traces left in the house. This process transformed the limitations of photographic representation into a dynamic foundation for mourning. By deconstructing her original written invitation to Feifei, the project invites readers to engage with the work through their own lived experiences, creating a reflective space for survival and renewal.