Finding Sumiko contains a display of 15 photographs, texts, accompanied with artist’s performance. The photos and texts contain detailed journalistic investigation into the life of a Japanese singer who died in the Japanese Internment Camp Manzanar while Chen, the artist, is physically present briefing her investigation. As the presentation concludes, Chen reveals that the entire project is artificially constructed: Sumiko is a fictional character in a real history context.  

Finding Sumiko not only creates constructed images, but also build a system or framework in which “truthful” images are decontextualized to become false. The work reveals the easiness to fabricate history and other cultural narratives in the age of Internet. It produces a space for questions about how people’s perception of history takes shape and addresses the relationship between truth and false, representations and realities.