Applepear Opening 05/01/26 – CEPA Gallery | Up to date Images & Visible Arts Middle

APPLEPEAR
Work by Helen Lin
UB MFA 2026

Opening Reception: May 1st, 5:00-8:00 PM
On View: 05/01/26 – 05/30/26

APPLEPEAR brings collectively images, drawing, video, and set up to discover how the physique carries need, collective reminiscence, and cultural strain. My work facilities on components that really feel acquainted and intimate similar to arms, mouths, fruit, or jewellery—symbols that shift that means via my staging and manipulation. I’m drawn to the methods we give that means to those gestures and the way they will seem erotic, violent, or sacred relying on the viewer’s gaze. 

I consider trauma and need usually exist collectively and consider them as inseparable. My photos and video work communicate to that overlap between pleasure and sorrow, craving for one thing however holding emotions of harm. Cultural and familial histories, my very own and people of others, are saved within the physique, shaping how we feature ourselves. For many individuals, the physique could be each a web site of longing and a spot the place hurt has been saved. Objects like fruit function vessels to hold these concepts, as they decay, bleed, seduce, and maintain reminiscence. 

The exhibition expands these concepts via two installations that flip them right into a shared expertise. Saving Face recreates a bedroom-like surroundings the place viewers encounter written reminiscences from first and second-generation immigrants reflecting on their experiences rising up. These tales communicate to cultural expectations, household dynamics, and the strain to take care of appearances whereas carrying non-public struggles. 

In the adjoining living-room set up, viewers are invited to sit down and watch Is This How We Love?, a single-channel video composed of portraits of people consuming fruit that was as soon as minimize for them by a mum or dad or caregiver. A gesture that’s easy and deeply acquainted turns into a mirrored image on the methods love and sorrow are communicated not directly via acts of care relatively than phrases. 

Together, these works contemplate how love, grief, and cultural reminiscence are handed between generations, and the way the physique turns into the place the place these inheritances are held.