Description

Revolving around the undocumented, ethnic Vietnamese community living on Tonlé Sap lake (Siem Reap and Pursat, Cambodia) who Thanh Mai has been working with for the better part of a decade, part 1 presents the artist’s ongoing observations and reflections on a community whose fate is no longer in its control. Due to various historical shifts, wars, genocide, and the complex political relationship between the two neighbouring countries, the people of this community have been denied the right to documentation, legal protection and education, thus becoming displaced, stateless and impoverished. From photography and documentary film to sound installation, experimental video and archival documents, Thanh Mai uses an array of media first to slowly approach the community, then to carefully rearrange and piece together the stories (of dreams, and often nightmares) they shared with her, to finally re- present, as truthfully as possible, their collective sense of loss and irrevocable reality of continuous displacement.

Description from "No More, Not Yet" Exhibition Brochure, 2023, p. 3.