Artist Statements
1st Place: Kaylee Sun and Sandy Huynh - Sonder
Sonder is “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own”. Sonder often focuses on the differences in each person’s life. Their own personal worries, pains, pleasures, ambitions, and routines. However, people’s lives are not always different. We share moments of similarity through experiencing the same life situations or carrying out the same routine and actions. There is at least one other person in the world who we must have done the same action at the same time. Whether it is mundane such as getting up at the same time or more complex such as going to college, these moments exist where we sync with others and experience the same situations as our own. We also cross paths with others living very similar lives without realizing or encountering them. This piece follows the routine of two college students starting their day. While they may carry very different intentions for their lives, their routines harmonize throughout their day.
The realization that our lives may be more similar than it seems and we cross paths with these people encourages us to consider the beauty in each person’s lives and how we can learn from each other. Taking the chance to talk to someone new and become a part of their life may open up a door to new experiences or understandings that would be unachievable without sonder. During times of loneliness or loss of direction, plucking up the courage to talk to someone new removes the barrier and helps us to better understand the other person’s and our own experiences.
* The video contains split audio and is best experienced listening to with headphones.
Sonder is “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own”. Sonder often focuses on the differences in each person’s life. Their own personal worries, pains, pleasures, ambitions, and routines. However, people’s lives are not always different. We share moments of similarity through experiencing the same life situations or carrying out the same routine and actions. There is at least one other person in the world who we must have done the same action at the same time. Whether it is mundane such as getting up at the same time or more complex such as going to college, these moments exist where we sync with others and experience the same situations as our own. We also cross paths with others living very similar lives without realizing or encountering them. This piece follows the routine of two college students starting their day. While they may carry very different intentions for their lives, their routines harmonize throughout their day.
The realization that our lives may be more similar than it seems and we cross paths with these people encourages us to consider the beauty in each person’s lives and how we can learn from each other. Taking the chance to talk to someone new and become a part of their life may open up a door to new experiences or understandings that would be unachievable without sonder. During times of loneliness or loss of direction, plucking up the courage to talk to someone new removes the barrier and helps us to better understand the other person’s and our own experiences.
* The video contains split audio and is best experienced listening to with headphones.
2nd Place: Aejin Yi - “SONGS TO LISTEN TO AGAIN”
This piece is a bit "interactive" because it invites viewers to reveal the "story" themselves. The tabs pull out and move the little figures: the first row is supposed to represent the meeting between strangers. The 2nd row is supposed to represent a connection (any kind of relationship). The last row is supposed to represent departure. As these figures move towards and/or away from each other, the little tabs also reveal a short poem/story: (from left to right) "People are like music / You'll come across them randomly...suddenly... / And they will replay in your minds until you part ways / But when you find them again, you'll realize, you never forgot the lyrics." I think with my own personal experiences recently, I've been appreciating the fact that everyone has their own stories. Despite our different experiences, we can all understand and relate to having people in our lives that we just aren't that close with anymore. It happens, whether it was due to time, distance, etc. Like throwback/old songs we hear once in a while... we never truly forget anything. People don't just forget the people they used to know. People carry their stories silently, but you'd be surprised of what they will tell you if you just listen. Not all departures are bad either; every person that you meet and build a connection with helps you grow. Nothing will change the fact that you still made memories with them. Just like music, nothing will change that feeling that you associate with it.
This piece is a bit "interactive" because it invites viewers to reveal the "story" themselves. The tabs pull out and move the little figures: the first row is supposed to represent the meeting between strangers. The 2nd row is supposed to represent a connection (any kind of relationship). The last row is supposed to represent departure. As these figures move towards and/or away from each other, the little tabs also reveal a short poem/story: (from left to right) "People are like music / You'll come across them randomly...suddenly... / And they will replay in your minds until you part ways / But when you find them again, you'll realize, you never forgot the lyrics." I think with my own personal experiences recently, I've been appreciating the fact that everyone has their own stories. Despite our different experiences, we can all understand and relate to having people in our lives that we just aren't that close with anymore. It happens, whether it was due to time, distance, etc. Like throwback/old songs we hear once in a while... we never truly forget anything. People don't just forget the people they used to know. People carry their stories silently, but you'd be surprised of what they will tell you if you just listen. Not all departures are bad either; every person that you meet and build a connection with helps you grow. Nothing will change the fact that you still made memories with them. Just like music, nothing will change that feeling that you associate with it.
3rd Place: Kimberly Tran - “A Stranger's Meal Is My Own”
These past two years of cooking and sharing food with family have opened my eyes to the concept of food as a love language, branching beyond the love languages of acts of service and quality time. An integral part of this whole process, for me, is the act of shopping for ingredients, and doing so with my mom in a local, Vietnamese-owned supermarket (Mom’s Supermarket) further ties in the familial, cultural aspect. I wanted to see how my personal experience with food and grocery shopping would exist alongside countless strangers’ experiences. These snapshots freeze specific moments in time in which someone passing by is carrying out a task individually to them, yet my existence there brings it into a shared realm of (eating) habits and possibly even lifestyles.
There are endless possibilities of how fragmented ingredients in a cart will eventually transform into a dish that will feed these strangers and perhaps their families, friends, etc. I wonder what meals they will cook. Are they using recipes passed down from generations ago? Will they be smiling as they take their first bite? Although I do not know these people or their stories, the couple of seconds I got to share with them makes me conscious of this inherent connection through food—food and ingredients that I must acknowledge we are beyond lucky to have access to as they sustain us not just physically but emotionally as well.
These past two years of cooking and sharing food with family have opened my eyes to the concept of food as a love language, branching beyond the love languages of acts of service and quality time. An integral part of this whole process, for me, is the act of shopping for ingredients, and doing so with my mom in a local, Vietnamese-owned supermarket (Mom’s Supermarket) further ties in the familial, cultural aspect. I wanted to see how my personal experience with food and grocery shopping would exist alongside countless strangers’ experiences. These snapshots freeze specific moments in time in which someone passing by is carrying out a task individually to them, yet my existence there brings it into a shared realm of (eating) habits and possibly even lifestyles.
There are endless possibilities of how fragmented ingredients in a cart will eventually transform into a dish that will feed these strangers and perhaps their families, friends, etc. I wonder what meals they will cook. Are they using recipes passed down from generations ago? Will they be smiling as they take their first bite? Although I do not know these people or their stories, the couple of seconds I got to share with them makes me conscious of this inherent connection through food—food and ingredients that I must acknowledge we are beyond lucky to have access to as they sustain us not just physically but emotionally as well.
Honorable Mentions
Mackenzie Kostrow - “Momentary Connection”
Momentary Connection expresses the feeling of "sonder" that occurs in brief connections between two people before they return to their individual lives. The idea that strangers live a unique life that others will not fully be aware of is expressed in each of the girl's color pallets. Each girl is a primary color: blue, yellow, and red. These primary colors signify the independence of each person within the illustration. They do not need each other to exist and can stand alone without another person's influence. However, when a brief connection occurs between two people, it is a moment that can have a significant impact, hence the secondary color that is created between the overlap of the two characters. Without these two people meeting, a momentary connection and a consideration of the other person's complex life would have never occurred. However, these moments are not permanent, as each character moves further away from the other, the secondary color is lost and transfers entirely into the new primary until the next connection. |
Aidan McDonald - “Vantage Point”
Vantage Point is about different times when I’ve seen someone and thought to myself, “I want to get to know this person.” All of the spaces in the drawing represent real places where this has happened: in the library, across from me on the bus, through a peephole, now occurring simultaneously. Ultimately, I never see these people again, so I decided to depict them simplistically - the impression of a person with none of the detail. All of the figures contain colors from others to allude to interactions between them and a sense of interconnection. |
Featured Artworks
Taryn Liu - “Start Your Day With Landwer”
This film photograph was taken on 35mm film at Cafe Landwer's flagship location in Boston, Massachusetts on February 17th, 2022. It is an observation of a conscious choice to occupy and share a space with others while simultaneously choosing to work individually. |
Sadie Rose - “Moments”
This art piece is a digital painting, illustrating the many moments that we all unknowingly share. In this piece I use portraiture to represent how connected each of us are even when we don’t realize it. |
Adrian Santiago - “i may not see you but i know you’re walking with me”
“i may not see you but i know you’re walking with me” is a sculpture I created as a reflection of my experience as someone who has fear of abandonment and grew up fearing death, work at a place where I was constantly surrounded by grief and loss. Over the years, I have established connections with seniors who as life takes its course, eventually come to pass. Instead of mourning I have learned to appreciate the memories and lessons learned with them, which in turn have shaped who I am today and these memories shall be with me for as long as I walk in this Earthly journey.
“i may not see you but i know you’re walking with me” is a sculpture I created as a reflection of my experience as someone who has fear of abandonment and grew up fearing death, work at a place where I was constantly surrounded by grief and loss. Over the years, I have established connections with seniors who as life takes its course, eventually come to pass. Instead of mourning I have learned to appreciate the memories and lessons learned with them, which in turn have shaped who I am today and these memories shall be with me for as long as I walk in this Earthly journey.
Nicole Le - “Self-Portrait”
When starting this project, I intended to do a conventional self-portrait when it struck me that a self-portrait should not be limited to the face level; there’s more to everyone than what is on the surface. When trying to answer the question, who am I? The more I reflected, the more I realized that I am a reflection of the people around me – my family and friends. This life-size mirrored paper outline of myself is filled with doodles and line drawings that I felt represented different parts of me. The sun imagery in the chest area visualizes my optimism and ability to find motivation. While, the flames and eye imagery in the abdomen addresses my shortcomings of being impatient and a perfectionist. When standing in front of the piece, the viewer sees a distorted reflection of themselves with lines of my identity. Their reflection meshes with the artwork, creating a unique conversation between myself and the viewer. I hope that this artwork allows the audience to recognize the impact and qualities of others on ourselves, sparking a reflection of self-identity between strangers. In a way, this allows us to understand the beauty and complexity in other people and their lives while also acknowledging our busy lives with our own aspirations and struggles. |
Michelle Huang - “Sea of Faces”
The night I read the prompt for the Sonder Art Show, I dreamt of thousands of fishes swirling in the ocean's current. It made me think about how in this swarm of sea life, each individual fish has a destination -- perhaps the destination was one planned long ago, or perhaps the destination is still one that's uncertain. Regardless, it reminded me a lot of humanity. We all have struggles to handle and dreams to achieve. In a sense, we are all fish swimming in the current of the sea that is our lives. However, while we swim, we sometimes forget to take notice of our neighboring fish. The struggles they handle, the dreams they want to achieve. It's important, once and a while to look around -- to take notice of and to open our eyes to the challenges and aspirations of those around us. We're all swimming in the same water, so why not try understanding our community rather than swim solo. In my piece 'Sea of Faces', I wanted to reflect this metaphor visually. When facing the topic of Sonder, I wanted to create something personal, and more importantly: true to the world and people around me. With this, I hope when viewing this piece that you too can reflect upon the world and its inhabitants surrounding you. |