Jia Hao

Jia Hao
San Diego, California, USA

STATEMENT

These Polaroid emulsion-transfer diptychs carry the story of a love: how gently it began, how close it grew, how it started to ache, how it came apart, and the quiet that followed.

The people in these images rarely show their faces. I’ve always cared less about who they were than about what stayed with me: a gesture, the curve of a shoulder, a small moment tender enough to keep and private enough to let go of a name. Each piece brings together two photographs that never belonged together. Alone, they are quiet, but held side by side, something passes between them that neither could say on its own, a longing, a pull, two feelings held gently at once.

I didn’t make this work to explain what happened between us. I made it to keep something I never quite found the words for: wanting someone close while wanting, at the same time, to run. A few images return again and again in different shapes, meaning something new each time, the way a memory softens and changes the longer you carry it. In the end, this isn’t a story about “us.” It’s a story about that pull itself, something that was mine to feel, but that I hope anyone who has loved, and lost, might feel too.

BIO

Jia Hao is a photographer and mixed-media artist working across photography, collage, and mixed media, with a particular interest in abstract explorations of the human body and folk-art traditions. She holds a BFA in photography and digital imaging from the University at Albany, SUNY, from 2010 to 2014.

Her work has been exhibited internationally, including a solo exhibition at New Corner Space in Shanghai, group exhibitions at The Glasgow Gallery of Photography in Scotland and Black Box Gallery in Oregon, and an online exhibition with F-Stop Magazine. She has participated in international exchange and research projects, including the Kunming-Zurich artist exchange programme and a folk-art documentary project with the Miao minority in Guizhou, China, and attended a workshop with photographer Mary Ellen Mark.

Her photography and collage work has been featured in Addition Magazine, BoooooooM, ARTDOC Photography Magazine, and AL-TIBA9 Art Magazine, along with interviews and profiles in Visualatelier8, Artistweekly, and Artistcloseup. Her honors include honorable mentions from LightSpace Time, Creative Quarterly, and TERAVARNA.

She is currently based in San Diego, California, working between photography and analog collage, using found imagery and Polaroid emulsion transfer to explore memory and emotional experience.

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IMAGES