Kỷ Niệm Ngày Cưới

"Kỷ Niệm Ngày Cưới” is a series that references photographs during my parent’s wedding ceremony in Vietnam.

This series began through the lithograph process, where I investigate the idea of retracing memories through physically rewriting notes left on the back of each photograph. As someone who is Vietnamese but is illiterate in the language, the act of retracing a family member’s handwriting was a gesture of reconnecting to my lost heritage. Using Adobe Photoshop, I began digitally reconstructing this photograph to separate them into five printable layers. The time and physical labor of hand-pulling lithographic prints became an act of devotion. I am attempting to uncover and retrace the familial history that have been disrupted through immigration. This process resulted into a diptych set of trompe-l'œil lithograph prints, tricking viewers into they are the original photographs.

These series of photographs were further explored in the weaving process, where I was creating distortions and reactions based on the materials in real time on a TC-2 Loom. Instead of relying on the digital process to distort the image, I was directly pulling yarn and creating visual spillages in the weaving. I experimented with stopping and starting the loom at various points in the weaving to create the disruptions and banding of visual information. Another form of distortion came through the use of materials. By changing my yarn from cotton to metallic silver and gold, the image became readable in only certain perspectives and angles. Encouraging viewers to manipulate their perspectives in order to see the entirety of the piece.

In one of the final iterations of this series, I sourced metallic gold organza with the intent to create digital light projections. The translucent, sheer qualities of the fabric allowed for an image to pass through multiple layers of fabric—each time getting more and more distorted. The effects of the digital projection on the metallic organza created a cascade of shimmers throughout the piece, allowing for it to glow from afar.