Description of Work

Contradictions - 2021 - Installation: Ceramic, chalk pastel on jeans, chalk pastel on paper, photographs, pho, origami, string, audio, poetry, found poetry, found photos found songs found table, found carpet, found pillow - Not for Sale

Artist's Statement

The contradictory nature of my work is meant to replicate the ever changing idea of self and identity. As an American, who is a quarter Vietnamese, my family and I have a complex relationship with culture and assimilation: my work is an exploration of this assimilated identity. Chalk pastel that is unfixed gives my pieces their own life span. Jeans are used in my work, and meant to actually be worn, so as to further be an introspection of my own identity and culture. Family photos are used to explore this concept. Yet, the complexities of my identity and family have pushed me to reach outside of a single medium, in which cross-disciplinary art is needed to convey this idea. Ceramic phở​ ​bowls with images of my dead family along with stereotypical Vietnamese iconography are being used to juxtapose the ephemeral moments of sharing a meal with others with the lasting nature of ceramics. These bowls are used in photos of me becoming these dead relatives, further internalizing their part in creating my view of identity.

An assemblage of found objects and the ones I make, are used to explore constructed memories. The pieces work together in an installation replicating an intimate space, allowing the viewer to become immersed into the work. The longer the viewer sits in the space, the more the lines between art and object become blurred.

These conflicting ideas of the temporal versus the lasting mimic the contradictory nature​ ​of time—my work shows the past, informing the present, and the present changing and learning from the past. It is meant to be a space to merely sit in my mindscape: of past and present, American and Vietnamese, old and new, found and created, dead and alive.

If you wish to purchase any of these pieces, please contact the gallery director, Jacqueline Nathan (jnathan@bgsu.edu.)