Shelly Huynh

Distortion of Humanity

Distortion of Humanity is a self-portrait, but not in the traditional sense. It is a reflection on memory, displacement, and the way time reshapes our understanding of the past.

At the heart of this installation is an enlarged, 8-foot reproduction of an actual photograph—an image of my mother and me as a baby, taken in a refugee settlement. This is a common photo, one given to many newly arrived refugees, meant to document a new beginning. Yet within its frame lies the weight of migration, of survival, of an identity shaped by both loss and resilience.

Wooden dowels pierce through the image, physically distorting it, fragmenting the past in the same way memory does. At the ends of these dowels, I placed rose petals—a contrast to the rigidity of the structure, a symbol of tenderness, of fragility, and of the beauty that endures even in the face of displacement.

This piece is an exploration of how history imprints itself onto us, how we carry the distortions of our past, and how even in disruption, there is space for reflection, for healing, and for growth.