When: closing September 2, 2019
There are two main narratives of the Vietnam War: that of the triumphant North and that of the vanquished United States. The people left out of both of these stories are the people of South Vietnam, who fought beside the Americans, and then were dispersed around the globe after the defeat.
Tiffany Chung, the artist behind this show, is the daughter of a man who served as a helicopter pilot in the war and was held prisoner for 14 years by the North Vietnamese. After his release, he moved his family to the United States, so Chung herself is part of the group whose story she is documenting.
There are three rooms in this display; the first concentrates on her father's story of serving and being captured. The second room is devoted to videos of South Vietnamese refugees who tell their stories: both what they witnessed in Vietnam and their lives since the war ended. When you walk into the room, it's quite a cacophony of voices, but there is closed captioning on all the monitors, so you can focus on each person individually. There's also a video in the room about people who remained in Vietnam, and the life they've made for themselves there.
The third room is the Vietnam Exodus Project. It maps the journeys of people from Vietnam, as they were forced to migrate from their homes. There are watercolors done by young artists and based on photographs of migrants, and there's a large map showing the exodus from Vietnam to other places in the world.
Verdict: An important show that concentrates on a story that has been ignored by history.
No comments:
Post a Comment