Untitled (from the Truc Trang Walls series), 2006

Four color photographs.
140 x 178 cm each

Truc Trang Walls records the process of building a “family monument”, a dwelling in a village in Vietnam by Khoai Phan a vietnamese refugee. During the film we see bricklayers, dancers, neighbours and governors, as well as the film crew. They generate situations with no other script than their own theatrical but genuine behaviours. The half-built walls are transformed into a performative stage where the roles are mixed and confused.
    
A selection of photographs of a display case full of objects is exhibited along with the film. Thanks to a digital montage using superposition or collage, each object is shown sharply in focus. Both the objects and the house belong to Khoai Phan who, at the end of the war with the United States, fled Vietnam and settled with his family on the outskirts of Long Beach, California. Thirty years later, when Vietnam began to open up, Phan returned to his home town. There he built a house in the same architectural style as the Southern California homes in the suburbs of Los Angeles.

For more information:  ICI Claire Trevor School of the Arts, Irvine, USA and Generali Foundation, Viena, Austria

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