My interdisciplinary practice is interested in multiple truths, blurry temporalities, sensory affirmations, more-than-human voices and ways of knowing otherwise.
Often I work through long-gestating, fluid processes of gathering, breaking and repairing from my own world-making vernacular of audio/visual fragments, tactile collections of whatnots and scraps of linguistic detritus. Thinking with these materials, I often begin at slippages in so-called ‘history’, archives and storytelling— towards channeling the ineffable tensions between grief and joy, alienation and belonging, dissidence and complicity, disassociation and sentimentality. My work manifests as experimental films, installations, sculpture, collage and scent.
I am a queer second-generation Vietnamese/Chinese person from the stolen and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations (colonially known as Vancouver, Canada) now based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Lucifer falls from Heaven at Dawn, 2023 - Across landscapes haunted by settler colonialism, agro-industry, coal mining and ‘green’ energy, the figure of the bat is the focal point of this experimental eco-horror. Bats, a sonic species, are considered at a unique set of intersections between ecology and economy, pestilence and good fortune, vision and sound, and alienation and belonging.
Lucifer, a bat marionette who narrates this film, falls to Earth and lands at the foot of a collapsed limestone mountain. As they come to their senses, Lucifer begins a journey to reconnect with The Others, their other bat kin. Along the way, Lucifer encounters biologists who are also searching for these nocturnal and elusive mammals, tracking and gathering data using audio/visual technologies that cross fields between cinema, science and surveillance. Despite their associations with virality, evil and death, Lucifer discovers that their insect eating kin saves agro-industry in the billions. Money that would otherwise be spent on pesticides, lest grain fields be decimated, proves Lucifer and their species as economically viable. Accordingly, bats have recently had a surge in international conservation policy worldwide.
Lucifer troubles these acts of state-sanctioned security as it is exchanged for a quantifiable understanding of value and productivity under capitalism— reserved for ‘good’ citizens and good workers. Lucifer asks their viewers and listeners, am I worthy of your protection?
What breaks on the horizon? 2023 - Installation view of solo exhibition 'What breaks on the horizon?' at Southern Alberta Art Gallery Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin in Lethbridge (CA), 2023. This includes 'Lucifer falls from Heaven at Dawn', a 2-channel digital film projection with stereo sound (00:13:34), 'Dear friends and fam', 20 slip cast ceramics marionettes made with reused and found textiles, deadstock teddy bear shoes, dried clay, fishing line, flaslights, custom wooden benches with beet stain and carpet, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of Blaine Campbell.
Dear friends and fam and Rest no wicked 2023 - Installation view of 'Dear friends and fam' (20 slip cast ceramic marionettes made with reused and found textiles, deadstock teddy bear shoes, dried chunks of clay and fishing line) and Rest no wicked (00:02:29). Exhibited at Southern Albert Art Gallery Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin, Lethbridge, CA., 2023. Photo courtesy of Blaine Campbell.
Dear friends and fam, 2023 - Detail view of 'Dear friends and fam', slip cast ceramics, found and reused textiles, deadstock teddy bear shoes, butterfly, dried chunks of clay, fishing line. Exhibited at Southern Albert Art Gallery Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin, Lethbridge, CA., 2023. Photo courtesy of Blaine Campbell.
Lakenhaal Laat, 2023 - An evening of performances on the occasion of the announcement of the winner of the Doesjenel Prijs. Each artist who was nominated for the prize (GC Heemskerk, Emma Van Noort and Kwinnie Le) invited artists in their community to respond to the works in the prize exhibition. I was invited by the winner Kwinnie Le to host my ongoing social sculpture, Scent Bar.
Many Looks Work, 2023 - Detail view of 'Many Looks Work', an ongoing sculpture series. Gelatin, makeup, ashes, cracked walnuts, custom painted acrylic nails and accessories. Dimensions variable. Curated by Aubane Berthommé Martinez and Kyra Nijskens at Worm, Rotterdam, NL.
Last Lost Time, 2021 - Single channel version of the film 'Last Lost Time' (made in collaboration with John Brennan and Elisa Ferrari, 2021, 00:17:20). Shown in 2023 in the group exhibition 'The Ground Up and the Washed Down' curated by Yin Yin Wong at A Tale-of-a-Tub, Rotterdam, NL. Photo courtesy of LNDW Studio.
Tear Possibility 2, 2021 - Installation view of collage 'Tear Possibility 2', 66 x 57 cm, slumped glass, laser jet prints of bootlegged archives, iPhone photos, stock image of fruit bat, tape, steel. A part of the group exhibition 'The Ground up and the Washed Down', curated by Yin Yin Wong at A-Tale-of-a-Tub, 2023, Rotterdam, NL. Photo courtesy of LNDW Studio.
Last Lost Time, 2021 (with John Brennan and Elisa Ferrari) - From 2018-2021, myself in collaboration with John Brennan and Elisa Ferrari (aka the electro-acoustic duo dashes), have been listening and sounding at various locations— as sensing and listening exercises, as experiential scores, as practices of collaborating and improvising in situ together. For this particular work, we focused these activities on the overlaps between Roger’s/Lantic Inc., a sugar refining factory on port property and the Vancouver Art Gallery, currently based in a former law court.
As a single channel film with 8-channels of sound, Last Lost Time focuses on and entangles specific, regional histories between corporation, the state and the arts. Text, sound, image and disembodied voices conjure present-day, nuanced connections to early 20th century socio-political hegemonies and struggles such as the viral codification of Chinese labour, xenophobic advertisements of imported Hong Kong sugar, a gallery occupation as a part of the Bloody Sunday sit-in relief labour strikes, the affiliations between the second mayor of so-called Vancouver, the Roger’s family, the presidents of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the original founders of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Laid out in audio/visual and sculptural fragments, the installation solicits the sensorial labour of audiences rather than the quantitative, cause-and-effect logic usually affiliated with archives— towards evoking the depths of complexity and complicity between individuals, institutions and the systems of posterity, consumption, presentness and progress.
a sentimental dissidence - Installation view of solo exhibition 'a sentimental dissidence' (2019) at The National Gallery of Canada, 2021. Photo courtesy of The National Gallery of Canada. Includes the film 'Coco Means Ghost' (2019, 00:24:25, digital with stereo sound), empty cans of coconut water, tempered glass, aluminum, UV reducing vinyl, transducers, benches.
Here is the link to watch 'Coco Means Ghost':
Coco Means Ghost is a conversation between worlds. The narrator is Coco, a ghost that takes the form of a coconut tree in order to speak to a roster of protagonists on the west coast of Canada and the south of Vietnam. She asks for their help in recalling the fragmented story of Ông Đạo Dừa, the leader of a small, self-sustaining, pacifist, anti-war society that was based on Cồn Phụng, a small island in the south of Vietnam during the sixties into the mid seventies until it was dissolved after the Fall of Saigon.
