I rebuild the complex relationship of three family members inside of my family, including father, mother, and myself. I create a family scene from daily life in which everyone in the family is totally absent.

In the video, we see me as the daughter trapped in a white curtain. I keep calling out the word “dad” in the ocean. I try to understand what is the meaning of the word “dad,” and why the word seems so unfamiliar to me.

In the recording, the sound of my mother is mixed with a very mechanical male voice from Google Translate. He reads the love letter which my father wrote to my mother from Taiwan to the US when they got engaged.

During the performance, I act as my mother, an indifferent housewife. In Chinese tradition, red melon seeds symbolize more children in the future, and people usually eat melon seeds on family union day. Performing as a housewife, I am very passive to the absence of the daughter and husband. However, to be hospitable, I invite the viewers to eat melon seeds with me, which is meant to symbolize an interruption of this absence. However, things do not change. At the end of the performance, the feeling of absence is still present, which makes viewers rethink the idea of family in our daily lives.