Safety Report
Xingrong Qiao became aware of the importance of a better relationship with ‘home’ after the death of a friend’s father. While the distance was already great – physically and in terms of connection, with Qiao living in the Netherlands – it only increased during COVID, and the anxious requests for more contact from her parents in China intensified.
She started taking self-portraits with the message ‘I am safe’ on paper and shared them daily in her family’s group chat. This refers to the Chinese tradition 报平安, (’report safety’). The work has a double meaning: it is an attempt at contact and at the same time an act of futile resistance by a rebellious daughter who is very much able to determine what’s good for her herself. With her repetitive photographs and soundtrack in which she raps her message, she claims control over their relationship: like a protester, she stands provocatively in the picture every day, keeping her face hidden.
The end result is a series spanning precisely one year. Finally, in the style of report forms – based on the group chat with her family – she transforms the conversation of the ‘good daughter’ into an administrative act. Thereby posing the question: is it every daughter’s job to constantly demonstrate her safety? What if she had been a man?
