» Shadow

Shadow forms part of Nguyen Thi Thanh Mai’s multimedia project Day by Day, drawing on more than more than one year (2014–2015) of extensive research by the artist in several small fishing communities in Siem Reap and Pursat, Cambodia as well as in Long An, Vietnam. The men, women and children in these communities are Vietnamese by birth or by ancestry, but many have lived in Cambodia for years or even for generations. Yet many of them do not hold national ID Cards from either the Cambodian or Vietnamese government. This lack of formal identification documents is a source of serious and ongoing difficulties for members of these communities. In Shadow, we see a series of hand-colored digital photographs in which the human figures have been blacked out, at once protectively obscuring individuals’ identities and hinting at the community’s shared uncertainty. Yet, in the villagers’ stories, pasts and futures repeatedly emerge, as if irrepressible. They speak openly of their memories, including of war and conflict; but they never speak of their dreams. Day by Day examines circumstances that are highly specific to Vietnamese in Cambodia, yet also of wider relevance, intersecting with universal questions of citizenship and migration.

(Edited from text excerpts provided by Roger Nelson)