Meditation anh-ton

nguyen (he/him)

cw: imageries of war

In Meditation, I digitally layer American wartime photos to the shape of my dad’s life in Viet Nam, beginning with his parent’s lives in Hue, his birth in Quang Tri, and his childhood in Da Nang. Composing my dad’s flight through the eyes of U.S. empire, I produce a palimpsestic refugee discourse that unsettles, interrogates, and dispels the politics of rescue. Although the work re/constructs my dad’s experience, I don’t make any direct references to my dad. By inscribing through effacement, I contest the consumptive power of hegemonic narratives of war and wrest agency over our stories. Confusing narratives of soldiers and civilians, past and present, aesthetics and history, colonizer and colonized, I leave behind a hybrid countermemory, claiming our room to mindfully breathe.