Đi thì không có đường về

On dirt roads, across wood plank bridges, my cousin Anh Ba Phát drove me, on his motorbike, to the place where my mother's childhood home once stood.

Originally built over a hundred years ago, my mother's home was also a store in the bustling village market. Both house and village were burned down twice: first by the occupying French Army, later by the Việt Minh forces.

The land on which the house once stood, sheltering her family, has since been reclaimed by the Mỹ Long River.

Reprint of archival photo of Nguyễn Thị Sáu, 1967. Video footage of rain falling on lotus, cultivated in a bomb crater pond, in her home village of Mỹ Long, 2018. Photo by Constance Mensh for Asian Arts Initiative.

Installation view. Photo by Constance Mensh for Asian Arts Initiative.

Untitled, 2018, Life after Death: in and near bomb crater ponds

Installation view. Photo by Constance Mensh for Asian Arts Initiative.

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Nguyễn Thị Sáu, in 2018, standing in front of a portrait of her taken in 1965.

Nguyễn Thị Sáu. Image courtesy of Phil Cho and Asian Arts Initiative

For Đi thì không có đường về (Leave, then there is no way home), I use photography, observational video, sound and storytelling to create an immersive installation about migration, memory, agency, and transformation in my parents’ home villages in Vietnam and in South Philadelphia, the neighborhood where I grew up and is today home to immigrants of all generations and diverse backgrounds. Tracing the cultural and spiritual affinities between communities half the world apart, the installation renders visible the richness of their social life and collective history.

Credits
Additional Camera, Philadelphia: Corey Austin Chao
Installation Coordinator: Basmah Sorathia
Carpenter: Drahos Petrucha
Technical Assistant: Muthi Reed

This work was commissioned by the Asian Arts Initiative, with original funding from the Pew Center for Art and Heritage, Philadelphia. It was on exhibit May 2018, at the SEAMAAC Community Outreach Office in South Philadelphia, as part of the (ex)CHANGE: History Place Presence project.

Past, Present, and Hopeful Futures: Situating (ex)CHANGE and Then and Now by Alexandra Chang (PDF download)

Trusting Art by Mary Jane Jacob (PDF download)

How Asian Arts Initiative’s 25th anniversary celebration explores the concept of home by Ebonee Johnson