Expats is a photographic series that examines exile not as a single act of departure, but as a continuous negotiation between memory and belonging. For those who migrate, home does not vanish; it is compressed, archived, and carried forward in fragments — in tastes, rituals, objects, and silent habits.

The works focus on the fragile attempt to preserve home within the conditions of displacement. Canned food and beverage containers — symbols of storage, durability, and survival — become vessels for floral compositions. The flowers are withered and dried, suspended between life and disappearance. Their presence evokes an effort to sustain cultural roots in a foreign landscape, while their decay reveals the limits of preservation.

Inspired by the baroque still lifes of Rachel Ruysch, the compositions echo the historical language of abundance and beauty, yet they unfold within the industrial logic of mass-produced containers. The encounter between the organic and the manufactured, between historical painting and contemporary migration, exposes a tension between continuity and rupture.

Rather than romanticizing migration, Expats reflects a quieter and more ambiguous reality: the attempt to flourish elsewhere does not always lead to renewal. Preservation becomes transformation; memory becomes residue; beauty becomes evidence of what cannot fully survive relocation.

In this sense, the images are not documents of migration, but meditations on its emotional architecture. They suggest that exile is a state in which life continues, yet never fully resumes — where home survives not as a place, but as a fragile aesthetic and emotional trace.