Return assignments: contemporary art traumas of modernity and history in Sài Gòn and Phnom Penh
By means of Viet Le
Duke University Press2021
Việt Lê is a professor at the California College of the Arts and co-author of the photo book White look. In this previous research, Professor Lê has contributed extensively to a long-awaited revelation of the colonial trappings of that famous household, the National Geographic magazine. Just as his photomontage provided a ‘toolbox’ in dissecting imperialism and its rich history, Return Obligations is also a roadmap for those who look at contemporary affairs with a fresh look. Indeed, Lê’s portraits of visual arts and memory history in Vietnam and Cambodia are of great interest to scholars of international relations. Often, because of our preoccupation with the vast tapestry of IR, we overlook the reality that everyday events are visualized through localized images and objects. Thus, the contemporary arts of countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia provide elegant bridges for immersion in the trauma of this regional and international experience.
Return Obligations extensively examines contemporary visual art in Cambodia and Vietnam in a delicate dissection of themes such as colonialism, trauma and human displacement. The art market in the region often seems to be in step with the combination of horror and commercialization – an apparent fetishization of contemporary conflicts. Lê refreshingly shows that a new generation of visual artists and filmmakers has unknowingly moved beyond this oppressive legacy. He discusses how Tiffany Chung, Rithy Panh, and Sopheap Pich courageously disrupt the traditional categorization of the “diasporic” and the “local.” Both insiders and outsiders, their highly original work offers fresh perspectives that in turn challenge long-standing concerns about the region.
In a beautifully written foreword, Việt Lê relives his own childhood trauma: his desperate raft escape from Saigon as a three-year-old child. Elegant, he writes
“The body has its own logic, its own memory. The afterlife of trauma leaves invisible traces. My perilous escape from the ocean and the laps I swim draw invisible lines. They have shaped who I am. I can’t capture what it feels like to almost drown when you leave a country where your mother takes you into the water because she’s afraid you’ll die on land. My passages since then have been physical and psychological. The only thing I can offer to explain them is to trace these experiences…” (p.xi).
Return Obligations thus contributes to the courageous recovery process of the author himself.
Organizationally, this impressive book begins with an introductory section entitled “Risky Returns, Restaging, and Revolutions,” which sets out the platform for his analysis of modernity, visual culture, and trauma in the contemporary art of Southeast Asia and Asian America. It is very comprehensive feat of strength, summarizing a vast literature on diaspora studies and vastly enriching our knowledge of social and historical context. However, it is not always easy to read, because the language is packed with concepts about form and content, and their idiomatic resonance. Nevertheless, this is an excellently executed overview of current thinking, combined with excellent suggestions for future revisionism of colonialist history. Above all, it recreates the authentic lives of the people at the center of this experience.
The first chapter focuses on how traumatic memories inspire creative work. This is especially important because we often view trauma exclusively through a negative lens, while in this manuscript we find wonderful examples of intellectual discovery in an environment of miserable adversity. The writer’s deft interweaving of trauma drama narratives is carefully interspersed with reference points such as the concept of ‘mere memory’, and a mix of micro and macro level observations of that quintessential life perspective of ‘what remains’ (p.104). ).
The second chapter focuses substantively on the world of local and diaspora Vietnamese artists. There is an illuminating discussion of the breakthroughs made by Sandrine Llouquet and Tiffany Chung, among many others who have successfully blurred and pushed the boundaries of what it means to write about the Vietnamese experience. In chapter three, the focus shifts to personal and public archives, drawing on the contemporary artworks of Cambodian painter Leang Seckon and Vietnamese-American filmmaker Hong-An Truong. Once again the author succeeds in bringing out positivity amid all the apparent negativity, he concludes
“Their return to personal and historical archives indicates archive fever. It is both a symptom and a desire. It is both the death instinct and the pleasure principle. It’s love unto death. … In the mind’s eye the planes are still floating and the bombs are bursting. These flowers are blooming everywhere” (p.188).
Chapter four, the last substantive chapter, is a juxtaposition of city and countryside. He subtly sketches the life experiences of Phnom Penh-based sculptor Sopheap Pich and conceptual artist Phan Quang from Saigon. The graphic section on the brutal legacy of Agent Orange is perhaps one of the topics most relevant to IR students. As Lê states, “The legacies of the American war remain hidden underfoot, beneath the concrete pavement of the jungle, soaked in soil, streams, and blood” (p.226).
It would be difficult to formulate a conclusion for a work so original in its interweaving of historicity, culture and trauma. Fortunately, Lê rather composes an emotional epilogue that revolves around the Diamond Island disaster, in which many young Cambodians lost their lives on a collapsed bridge, “a flirtatious evening turned into a tragedy,” and was part of the recurring trauma of modernization (p .244). It is a striking conclusion to a book that elegantly combines past and present, emotion and resilience.
This writer had the privilege of serving extensively for the UN in Vietnam and Cambodia. Lê’s work immediately reminded me of the trauma artist Tim O’Brien and of one of my American visits. When I saw “Artists Respond: American Art and the Vietnam War, 1965-1975” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2019, for me it was “Tiffany Chung: Vietnam, Past Is Prologue” that stole the show. It is an authentic perspective on the Vietnam War era through proud Vietnamese eyes. I still remember the modest but prosaic words in her video interviews with the older members of that large-scale Vietnamese diaspora. Listening to those hushed Vietnamese voices and reverent translations, it seemed as if each story personalized and visualized those traumatic times, sometimes in words of anger or regret, and always in emotion. In Return obligations, Việt Lê transfers this implicit ‘art of protest’ outside the venue into a 360-degree overview of past trauma as ‘Prologue’. So in many ways, Lê offers the artworks of people like Tiffany Chung (and I’m thinking in particular of “The Vietnam Exodus History Learning Project”) an appropriate analytical platform.
One has the feeling that Return Obligations consolidates this field. Chung has spoken about her family’s civil war story: Her late father was a helicopter pilot in the South Vietnamese Air Force and was imprisoned in brutal re-education programs for fourteen years. It is a bleak fact that such a tortuous history has never been part of the American view of the conflict, and has been grossly erased in Vietnam. Professor Lê is an excellent academic and with his careful wordcraft the art and culture of the Vietnamese and Cambodian diaspora is being saved and (fortunately) preserved. He does this with due respect for the seriousness of the crimes discussed, but also with an optimistic view of the creativity of survivors.
As others have suggested, one of the strengths of this tightly written and beautifully illustrated book is that Lê gently shifts the terrain of academic debate on displacement away from traditional administrative boundaries. From ersatz colonial imitation, the action shifts to the enriching plateau of artistic achievement, amid a brooding legacy of trauma. It is a fresh look at the painful residue of the diaspora, at the mass displacement and return of the population. It also reexamines the energy of refugee communities, their adaptability and the concept of diasporic selfhood. Based on the author’s intensive exploration of the curatorial world, what Lê offers is both a palimpsest of art criticism and a new exploration of the diasporic experience, subtly distilled into copious vignettes of creative output. Whether the medium is painting, poetry, photography, or sculpture, this book brings to life the artistic sustainability of diaspora experiences. It is a truly groundbreaking project and impressive in its breadth and scale of focus.
You find solace in the catastrophic story of Southeast Asia’s contemporary history that it has produced such creative beauty. This is reflected in the extraordinary achievements of the artistic people of Vietnam and Cambodia, at home and abroad. The achievements of artist-practitioners like Professor Việt Lê testify to how diaspora communities are profoundly enriching their newfound settlements in every part of the world. IR students will find great interest in this comprehensive study.
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