APPEARING ACT (from the Greek Photos Graphos :written/drawn/painted with light) is the photographic process through which Carô Gervay interacts with the notions of identity. Through visual experimentations of writing, drawing and painting with light, this process inquires into the underlying violence and the roles played by the photographic medium in relation to those themes and is informed by the histories of colonialism, personal stories and present socio-political contexts and concerns.

Going back and forth between family archives, conversations and the red lights of the lab, the photographer asks questions of the many “we” - we (could) belong to and how photographs define us as a species.

Going through layers of memories, masks, shadows, erasure and silence, this body of work points at the ruptures in transmission affecting diaspora communities, in her case as a woman of Vietnamese heritage. This also feeds into the current debates in the UK arts, which is still trying to adequately understand and include global demographics, such as South-East Asian perspectives.