Inspired from my own experience of sustaining intimacy across distance, I explore the emotional stages of a long-distance relationship. These altars explore loving someone from a distance, playing with presence and absence. Many artifacts are collected directly from my relationship. They materialize from physical objects and fragments that hold memories or shared experience.

Connection begins with a suspended key tied by red thread, drawn from a small ritual in which my partner tossed me his apartment key from the window. That simple gesture became a moment of trust. The skeleton key represents the opening of possibilities, while its suspension captures that tension of letting someone in. The red thread symbolizes both connection and fragility in the first stage of intimacy.

Vulnerability unfolds in a candle that creates something intimate, that small act of illumination, almost like revealing a private memory. It reminds me of intimate moments we share under the moonlight, whether lying in bed or outside in a park staring up at the stars. That kind of lighting; the soft, flickering glow mirrors those conversations where we become completely open with one another. In the second panel, the candle is gone, leaving only smoke and holder, capturing the delicate impermanence of those exchanges.  

In longing, I record the shadow of flowers my partner sent rather than their physical presence, preserving not the object but the memory of how it felt to receive them. 

Memory gathers small keepsakes that hold traces we leave behind for each other. When distance becomes part of the narrative, you start to cling to the physical reminders of that person. Objects become altars of memory, holding onto the feeling of touch, scent, or time. 

Awaiting remains unfinished because I am still in a place of anticipation, waiting for reunion and imagining a shared home. Domestic objects suggest a future life that, for now, lives only in the mind, reflecting the cyclical nature of distance: the repetition of waiting, reaching out, and returning to the same feeling.