Risograph printing with fluorescent orange and light teal, hand woven and machine sewn.

Statement

On recontextualizing the Vietnamese traditional mat, chiếu, into printed matters, my exploration looks into the object's textile and materiality, as well as subverting the association between chiếu and traditional concepts of family, marriage, and gender roles. Chiếu cói is a traditional Vietnamese mat made up of dyed and woven sedge stems - cói in Vietnamese. Due to its affordability, portability, and air porosity, chiếu has become a stable household item for many Vietnamese people: an eating mat, praying mat, sleeping mat, and sitting mat to name a few.

I tie the memories of chiếu with a place where all conversations begin. Feasts and ceremonies, such as marital, religious, or spiritual rituals; funerals; Lunar New Year celebrations; gambling and drinking; or casual everyday dinner, usually take place on chiếu. Chiếu is also a place of rest, pregnancy conception, childbirth, and child care. When coffins are inaccessible, corpses are wrapped in chiếu, as a way to provide a temporary resting place for the dead. Chiếu represents traditional Vietnamese values: heterosexual family structures and roles, communal gatherings, and spirituality.

My art practice seeks to explore digital dreamscape and print media, pattern and texture, authenticity and fabrication in trans identities and narratives. I want to subvert the values associated with chiếu with personal contexts of materiality and themes. How does one resist and adapt in these heteronormal spaces? Is it possible to escape pre-determined fates conceived by ancestry and tradition? How do trans individuals see and reinvent their images while documenting history and understanding faith?

Statement is excerpted from “Assemblage: Me, my story and I" Exhibition Booklet, 2023, p.31.