The Garden in Edgewood, 2024—current.

Chan Ting was one of my mom’s former patients. Before I learned this, his children Salina, Sivchristen and Peter were already good friends of mine. Salina’s daughter Sophia and I got along well because of our mutual love for art and our mixed-race identities. Gardening is a popular and sacred tradition for many Cambodians, particularly elders like Mr. Ting who has a plot next to Salina at the Edgewood Community Garden. A reclaimed parking lot behind Edgewood Highland Elementary School, the garden is a few minutes from my current home in Cranston, RI which is home to the majority of RI’s Cambodian population. During the warm weather, the Ting family tends to their plots at the garden. Observing them with my camera at the garden is nothing new for us, as I photograph them often like my second family. Without my own grandfather, having been executed during the Khmer Rouge, I look to Mr. Ting as a vision of what my grandpa would be like if he was still living, and I look to Sophia as a young version of my mom.