AS YOU GROW OLDER
(2022- on going)
While Vietnam represents for many in the West a place where a war was fought or athletic shoes are made, its people bear witness to a richer & far more complex reality. To expand and challenge the existing perception of Vietnamese people, it is to be able to see and understand the unruliness of it, through the excess of memories bestowed physically in this country; some given prominence through statues or architectures, while others are left to obliteration; the bodies become vessels for memories.
Memories bridge the past and the present but what is this memory we all have? History is too regional and everything else is word of mouth. One can remember such an event happened in our lifetime that may or may not have affected their own livelihood, but to what extent? To what extent does one believe in and is it the truth? What truth does one want to believe in and what truth is omitted and distorted? To question these notions, it is to reconstruct our own memories, the unusual, often overlooked places and people where one finds themself positioned.
A reliance and close study of individual styles and cultural relevance of each image’s landscape to tell its own story, to challenge traditions and reveal whatever it wants to. Its visual codes cueing the viewer’s interpretation. The images subvert these assumptions with dignity and sympathy, disrupting the signaling that triggers categorization.
In this work: Tạ Lê Hạnh- Thơ, the sisters Vân Lê, Dan Ni, Thái Linh, Annica, Ronny Ackah, Vũ Khôi Nguyên, Bùi Nhật Minh, Jonathan Poirier, Vũ Thu Hương, Nguyễn Nhật Minh Châu, Nguyễn Hà Phong, Nguyễn Hà Thanh, Nguyễn Hiếu Ngọc.
