Memory of the Blind Elephant

2016 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

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Nguyen Phuong Linh

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Set in the haunting space of an ex-colonial rubber plantation in Central Vietnam, Phuong Linh Nguyen’s film Memory of the Blind Elephant is a tender portrait of the complex economies of interspecies trauma and resilience in the face of continued extraction and destruction. Formerly present in the coronation of Potau Apui (the Jarai King of Fire), in Dr. Yersin’s exploratory crew during the colonial period, and now a major draw for tourists, the figure of the elephant is ailing, grievous, as though haunting its habitat. Intrigued by the reality she observed, Phuong Linh gathered, documented, altered, repositioned the local materials of ceaseless exploitation of natural resources: raw rubber, ferrosols, and aluminium to assert a critical proposition.

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Phuong Linh Nguyen’s multidisciplinary practice spans video, sculpture and installation. Her practice is concerned with geographic cultural shifts, traditional roots, and the splintered history of Vietnam. Tracing a complex network of ethnicities, religions, and cultural and geo-political influences. Her works contemplate visible versus invisible truths, form and time, and conveys a pervasive sense of alienation, dislocation, and the ephemeral. Nguyen Phuong Linh often travels for field research and to collect artifacts from historical sites of exchange. She transforms these materials in order to construct alternative perspectives and interpretations of fragmented histories, personal narratives, and memories.

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