Jan. 19- Feb. 12th, 2021: “Her Liminal Asian-Appalachian Experience”, Slocumb Gallery, ETSU, Curated by Jose Ardivilla and Kreneshia Whiteside. (Installed a smaller version 6’x11’ Transparent Voices And 4 paintings from Displacement Citizenship series)
Curators Jose Ardivilla and Kreneshia Whiteside "The Many Portals to Home"
"Trauma is memory always in bloom. The flowers strewn at Sisavanh Phouthavong's installation are artificial marigolds. These flowers are important to cultures that stretch from subcontinent of India all the way to Southeast Asia as tokens of reverence. The artifice of the marigolds are an interesting take that it will never wilt which is what memories are for many people who have been forcibly ejected from their war-torn homes. The cascading images of the refugees in her installation are in defiance of the bombs that scarred their land and their lives. The ghostlike images of these people are insistence of their own cultural identity to not face away in a strange land with artificial marigolds as testaments of their own survival."
"Such a transoceanic act of survival is also found in Sisavanh Phouthavong's work that are cascading portraits of a people that have surmounted different obstacles in seeking greener pastures. Phouthavong sought out participants for her piece Transparent Voices. The result is like an eerie ghost-like apparitions on fragile tendrils. This is not to say that the people in the photographs are all deceased but the phantasm of identity is what many Asian-American experience. To be an Asian American can be a sense of lingering for an imagined homeland and for a fantasy future of plenty."
"Home" is a quest and not a place. "Home" can be imaginary and can be real. "Home" is what is and what was with lenses of what should be and what could be. For these women of the diaspora, "home" is not easily safe and not easily accepted. "Home' is a nervous energy flitting between insistence and acceptance. "Home" is not either/or or neither/nor but an overlapping of those prescriptions set amidst these artists' notions and declarations.
"Trauma is memory always in bloom. The flowers strewn at Sisavanh Phouthavong's installation are artificial marigolds. These flowers are important to cultures that stretch from subcontinent of India all the way to Southeast Asia as tokens of reverence. The artifice of the marigolds are an interesting take that it will never wilt which is what memories are for many people who have been forcibly ejected from their war-torn homes. The cascading images of the refugees in her installation are in defiance of the bombs that scarred their land and their lives. The ghostlike images of these people are insistence of their own cultural identity to not face away in a strange land with artificial marigolds as testaments of their own survival."
"Such a transoceanic act of survival is also found in Sisavanh Phouthavong's work that are cascading portraits of a people that have surmounted different obstacles in seeking greener pastures. Phouthavong sought out participants for her piece Transparent Voices. The result is like an eerie ghost-like apparitions on fragile tendrils. This is not to say that the people in the photographs are all deceased but the phantasm of identity is what many Asian-American experience. To be an Asian American can be a sense of lingering for an imagined homeland and for a fantasy future of plenty."
"Home" is a quest and not a place. "Home" can be imaginary and can be real. "Home" is what is and what was with lenses of what should be and what could be. For these women of the diaspora, "home" is not easily safe and not easily accepted. "Home' is a nervous energy flitting between insistence and acceptance. "Home" is not either/or or neither/nor but an overlapping of those prescriptions set amidst these artists' notions and declarations.
| welcome_home_catalogue_received_january_16_2021.pdf |