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A cigarette can be thought of as a personal unit of time, through which time itself flees and in a way resembles a fleeting feeling of recollection. Like the smoke that dissolves and disappears in the air, images of the past come and go in the present. However, for this friendship that sustained over virtual contact, I found myself barely able to recall the images of us, as we relied on pixels to perceive and to remember one another. While the cigarette ash slowly accumulates as time goes, the pixels remain present in time, yet the images failed to leave an imprint in my recollection. 

With resemblance to the addiction of smoking, I’m haunted by a constant urge to release from the vagueness of self in this memory. In response to the feeling of uncertainty, YAN explores the losing of self that dwells in the time formed by pixels.