In the photographic series In Silent Stages, Chris (Yuetian Gao) charts a profound internal evolution, catalyzed by his experience as a 1.5 generation immigrant. He confronts the fragmentation and reconstruction of self through symbolic plaster sculptures, drawing direct inspiration from Jim Dine’s unconventional self-portraits in the Robe series and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s symbolic use of dismemberment in Self-Portrait as a Soldier. The photographic narrative unfolds across three distinct emotional stages: from the blurred ambiguity of concealment, through the stark reality of confrontation, to the eventual clarity of transformation. Yet, it is the deliberate imperfections of these sculptures—their cracks and flaws—that steer the work beyond singular autobiography, reframing identity not as a fixed state, but as a shared, unfinished question: a perpetually evolving and collective “We.”