Ways Women Survive, Ways They Exist 

For women, to live as full human beings in this world has never been easy. In these stories, women are placed within multiple roles: daughters-in-law, mothers, job seekers, and migrant brides within transnational contexts. Between bodily experience, childbirth, and the question of staying or leaving, they struggle between trauma recovery and life choices, while also being seen and expected within structures of power. They are expected to embody contradictory ideals: to be both desirable bodies and symbols of purity; to conform to norms while pursuing ideals. Within structures shaped by violence, sexual harassment, and entrenched misogyny, they continue to resist within bodies that are constantly constrained, seeking possibilities of freedom and rebirth. Their lives unfold like flowers in bloom. The Blood of a Hen and The River of White Porcelain may respond, through image, to the complexity of these predicaments, and open up alternative ways of seeing and understanding women’s experiences.