Thanh Vu
I am
- a troubled Vietnamese multi-disciplinary artist who happens to currently dwell within the u n i t e d states of America. I have been here for a third of my life.
- surrounded by childhood imagery, memory, repetitions, family, shadows, light, and by the various states of my fellow beings.
- willing to use any medium available in hopes that my point can bridge the broken gaps.
- striving to dispatch a message(s) with which I often have a hard time putting into words, both physically and mentally.
- inclined to whispering rather than shouting.
I am my work.
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The series "S lai t o (hybridity)" is a visual series of work that ongoingly explores the artist's personal identity within/beyond their cultural identity as a Vietnamese born and raised. "Hybridity" is aid by the feeling of longing: longing for home and longing to know where home is? It is representative of longing(s) for belonging(s) of a Vietnamese diaspora.
"Hybridity" can be viewed as stream of consciousness that is taken in the form of visual diary pages that consist of various elements, from writing, childish drawings to documentations of mundane assemblage sculptures, interior and exterior landscape and self portraits. This shaky, unsure feeling of home is translated into a series of photogravure (copper-plate etching) prints. The utilization of copper and photomontage (in terms of image- making) hope to express this sense of displacement that cannot be shaken off. It also hopes to visually communicate fragmented, blurry, and endangered personal memory of Vietnam under the lens of a Vietnamese diaspora. Copper is seen often as a commodity. Copper is representational of "the free market" (of importing/ exporting) and having incorporated copper metaphorically speaks to the experience of a Vietnamese daydreamer dreaming of the American dream.