(Re)present – (Re)member is a series of works created by artist Trâm Carin Lương at A. Farm. The collection explores ideas of vision, recognition, and memories of historical forces that shape modern Vietnam. The artist works primarily with found objects in the city of Saigon – discarded philosophy books, damaged photographs, and wartime bullet shells – bringing them together to reflect on a rapidly changing society in the aftermath of conflict. The vantage point of the series is of a younger person urgently looking, although with immense impasses, for a history refracted by time, language, and different ways of seeing. Marx.Smith.Hegel.Andme zooms unabashedly on the artist’s own body, as she reduces discarded books to a smattering of granular forms. In seeing the marks of time and human forgetfulness as aesthetic abstraction, the works locate the aftermath of war as a site of hope and beauty, instead of desperation.
The eclectic collection poses the question of how, as both spectators and actors of global events, can we make present again stories of those before us, to represent and to make them once again member of our common history. (Text courtesy of the artist)
(Re)present – (Re)member was part of the End of Season 1 show at A. Farm in May 2018, where Trâm was a funded resident by the Nguyen Art Foundation.