The work Marx.Smith.Hegel.Andme forms part of Tram Carin Luong’s project (Re)present – (Re)member, which explores ideas of vision, recognition, and memories of historical forces that have shaped 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 we – as both spectators and actors of global events – can make present again stories of those before us, to represent and to make them once again member of our common history.
(Edited from text excerpts provided by the artist)