Imaginary Homelands
Imaginary Homelands (2025) is a large-scale installation that reflects on memory, identity and the complexities of belonging from a distance, drawing on the migrant experience of navigating between cultural worlds. Through the symbolic form of gates—particularly the Chinese paifang—the work constructs a layered, liminal space that invites audiences to move through shifting thresholds of presence and absence, connection and exclusion.
Jacky Cheng, Imaginary Homelands, 2025, installation view, The Neighbour at the Gate, National Art School Gallery, Sydney, 2025, commissioned by the NSW Government through the Blockbusters Funding initiative and Department of Creative Industries, Tourism and Sport, Western Australia, image courtesy the artist and the National Art School © the artist, photograph: Peter Morgan .
In the background, work by Elham-Eshraghian-Haakansson.