US artist's exhibition exploring memory, loss, and time opens in Shanghai

"I inherited my grandmother's handbag," Blazina said while explaining her creation of glass handbags. "In a snapshot taken by my grandfather, she is holding it. The picture and the handbag correspond to the past: one records that instant, while the other caries it forward."

In translating these vintage handbags into glass, she was not just reproducing objects, "I am preserving a 'time that was once held'," she said. "This work embodies blood ties and memory that span generations."