A NOTE BEYOND NOSTALGIA

Lê Giang

Reconciling with a region's conflicting memories often necessitates unearthing the painful obstacles. Ruins, in this context, offer a powerful tool. As Tim Edensor suggests, they are "embodiments of the past," tangible reminders of events that shaped a region.

In this presentation, Le Giang walks us through her investigation of the Dinh or Vietnamese communal house -an architecture that is considered as a symbol of culture, spirit and religion of the country. Her 2017 work, "Vestige of the Land," takes inspiration from the reconstruction of a dinh in her father's homeland, a ruined structure representing a fragmented past. In 2019, she revisited this theme upon discovering a photo archive of such an architecture in the tropical agronomy garden, formerly known as colonial garden in Nogent-sur-Marne, Paris.

Le Giang will also share her artistic process of reproducing photographic images. She incorporates the embossing technique employed by Lebadang, a Vietnamese-French artist who served as an Indochinese soldier-worker in France during World War II. Through this technique, Le Giang discolors and erases details of the events, leaving viewers with evocative traces of history.