Tai Shan Schierenberg Yellow Tree, 2026

When we moved to a tiny peasant village in the Black Forest in the 1970's, where my German father lived at the end of the Second World War, we were definitely the only Chinese or brown people in the area. We attended the local school, and though everyone was extremely welcoming and friendly, I always felt an overwhelming sense of otherness.  

On a recent trip back, I spotted this lone larch tree (the only pine tree to seasonally lose its needles amongst the evergreen mass of the forest) on a walk and thought the scene summed up my old feelings of alienation perfectly. -Tai Shan Schierenberg, 2026