Intro
Ambulatory (viet title? –one suggestion has been “Chan” Dung)
I asked four Hanoi artists to paint a portrait of my feet. Each artist (Nguyen Quoc Hung, Nguyen Nam Dong, Nguyen Cao Thang, and Nguyen Tat Long) was given the same photo of my feet walking. I encouraged each of them to use their own artistic license in the interpretation of the subject.
Hanoi has many businesses that specialize in re-creating copies of highly regarded original paintings. I took each of the finished feet portraits to four different Hanoi businesses that specialize in the “reproduction of the world’s masterpieces” I asked the owner to have a copy made of one of the original I gave them. Subsequently, I directed the owner of each shop to have the copy they had made reproduced by a different copy artists that they employ. The second copy was then reproduced by yet another one of their copy artists I continued this process until a total of five copies were made. The fifth copy was, in fact, a copy of the copy of the copy of the copy of the original.
The “copy” asserts the significant importance of the “original” and at the same time implies that an aspect of its full potential is not realized without it being reproduced. Displayed as a group together with the original paintings, my feet are animated. I walk.
Emanation / Toa Ra
I live with the question “How are we connected and what forms or patterns does it create?” We all breathe, yet this goes unnoticed as something that connects us. Emanation, seeks to make an unseen aspect of where we meet, visible.
Over the course of four weeks, I collected the breath of over 250 Hanoi residents. Each contributor filled a balloon with their exhaled breath. The individuals who contributed their breath are members of a variety of community groups in Hanoi including Action for the City, various artist groups, Nha San Studio, and the people who live and work between where I have been living on Duong Thuy Khue and Nha San Studio.
The tied together collection of breath is in the form of a column, echoing the traditional stilts of the time-honored form of vernacular Vietnamese architecture in which Emanation has been installed.
