Saephanh’s work intermixes photography, painting, digital illustration and collage that center around the interplay between the fictive or digital and reality within the framework of a personal narrative. With diaried words, he describes that relationship melancholically to evoke a sense of standstill and reflection for himself simultaneously fueling a visual endeavor of compiling imagery that speaks to those words and emotions.

That research then informs a body of work that reflects on a multifaceted identity: Fractures of Asian American descent in tandem with the more specific identity of being Iu Mien American; the oddities of maleness and gendered desire, and it in context to his position socially— all largely narrated by a life led in isolation and alienation.

“I’d like to think that making each piece is saving myself in different ways. That can be pressing Command-S and saving a document of my life in an abstract way, or finding catharsis with the content of each piece I make— which again takes on many different forms too.”