Some say our words will be lost,
and perhaps our loves undone,
[we lasso light like an ache to verse the
water with our love]
but like the sands on our shores,
I trust
what we carry
will find its way to an oyster,
become folded in the stuff of shells,
and find its way to you
in a pearl-shaped
Memory
Weaving poetry into photographs of and from both writers’ homes, these postcards are a series of collaborative risograph prints by Audrey Buhain and Vic Xu. Each photo connects their individual homelands of the Philippines and ZheJiang, China through bodies of water, as well as the waters of their overlapping home and point of convergence on Wampanoag lands, colonially known as Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
Like a conversation turned poem, lines of poetry are written in response to one another and the photographs, allowing reflections on memory, migration, (re)connection, and community to surface from what floats and lies between them.
If memory were an instrument and
our lives the space it moved through,
by the end of all these stories, if i
reached into the water
would i find you there, hands open
with the words that made me?
[where else do we see each other
reflected if not in each other’s eyes?]
if it were ever as easy as a finished home,
where would the geography in which i’ve
made this life go?
Pasts come back to me
in pixels
or floating on petals landed in ponds
or lakes
or
i wonder how big a memory must be
to become a history
sometimes your stories are
just see-through pictures,
with imprints shining through
like clues left for me to love you by,
or histories for me to —
Words and Artworks by Audrey Buhain and Vic Xu
Audrey Buhain (she/her) is a writer who was raised in Santa Rosa, Laguna, Philippines and lives in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. Poetry has served as fuel to move through the vehicles of risograph printmaking, book binding, and other tangible modes of shifting words from digital to tactile surfaces. Her poetry is always activated by visual material, its constraints and possibilities often sculpted by the physical and conceptual forms found in familial and archival photographs.
Vic Xu (they/them) is a diasporic Chinese artist raised by the people and landscapes of North Carolina, Rhode Island, and HangZhou. Rooted in photography, design, and film, their multimedia practice often explores the tenderness and labor of remembering – especially as it relates to family, migration, and communal care. Vic’s work moves between images, objects, and inherited rituals to sit with quiet moments when the past resurfaces and the future feels malleable.
