Sự Hồi Tưởng (2019)

Vietnamese for “Remembrance”, this was a collaborative installation and ritual performance with Giang Trinh presented at SOMArts Cultural Center for City of Souls, the 2019 edition of their annual Día de los Muertos exhibition.

This interpretation of the traditional ancestor altar contains a total of 400,000 handpainted ticks to honor the 400,000 Thuyền Nhân or Boat People, who died at sea fleeing Vietnam in secret following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. The immersive ocean projection invites the viewer to contemplate the journeys their own ancestors have taken to this land and the perils that refugees face today in the global migration crisis.

Inspired by Vietnamese rituals of mourning, there were daily ritual performance activations of the altar along with weekly food gatherings as channels to engage with ancestors.

”Altar to Resilience” - An article published by Diacritics and DVAN (Diasporic Vietnamese Artist Network)