Download Catalogue Essay by Kari Valmestad

Dưới

Dưới, translates to 'under' and written in Chữ Nôm, is the character that frames my grandmother's feet. Chữ Nôm, the first original Vietnamese alphabet, was romanized through the period of French colonialism and early French postcolonialism into the current Vietnamese alphabet Chữ Quốc ngữ. Now obsolete to all but the few scholars who study it and in its near-death, Chữ Nôm's signification is no longer a language in the traditional context, but image language; one that contains the buried narratives of a subaltern past. Through the expansion and contraction of these narratives, the condensations of both blur and obstruct one another as two Vietnamese proverbs expand and contract in correlation. "Ăn quả nhớ kẻ trồng cây" translated to "Eat the fruit, remember who planted the tree" and "Chết vinh còn hơn sống nhục" translated to "Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees." In this case, proverbs are the residual scratches of alternative history, the verbal condensation of Vietnamese wisdom onto the hybridized window of past and present, one entrenched in the colonial history of physical and cultural violence.

About the Artist

Vân Thúy Lê's work examines identity construction with a specific interest in nationalism, postcolonial theory, language, and memory. Her current practice uses a variance of mediums, both digital and physical, to explore the ambivalent ties between society and self.