This website is at once a space of research, reflection, and documentation as affective labour, as well as a webshop where my mother’s upcycled handicrafts are sold as financial labour. This two-fold website is inspired by the Qiaopi trade, a remittance network set up in the 19th to 20th century by overseas Chinese communities to economically support their families in China. It was a combination of family correspondence and remittance; on one hand, a gesture of affective labour and on the other financial labour – infrastructure that enabled the circulation of emotional care as well as material support. Drawing from this alternative support network built by early Chinese Diaspora, the project is designed with this reference in mind in thinking about caring for others who are not physically close, a question that is rendered radically urgent in the wake of the current global health crisis. As such, Serenity Department’s efforts are also framed as design and publishing as remittance. All proceeds of the webshop go to my mother’s retirement fund so that she might come to know serenity in her near future.
Please website here: serenitydepartment.com
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