shashasha

Fueled by her own background as a second-generation immigrant, French-Vietnamese artist Nhu Xuan Hua delved into her family’s photographic archive and created an eery, lingering work on cultural displacement, generational memories and the malleability of reality.
Printed on thick cardboard paper, “Tropism, Consequences of a Displaced Memory” presents Nhu Xuan Hua’s personal photographs, digitally altered: a photo of a girl lounging on a bed, her face morphed into her surroundings, her arms and legs a pale silhouette against the background; a photo showing a wide view of a clean, carefully tended park with two people removed, only their outlines hinting at their lost presence; and so on. Through her research and her manipulation, Nhu Xuan Hua enters into a dialogue with her own and with her family’s past and creates a captivating work of elusive memories.