Summary
- Vietnamese-French photographer Nhu Xuan Hua recently opened Of Walking on Fire, her first UK solo at Autograph in London
- On view through September 19, the exhibition explores the fragility of communication and the slipperiness of diasporic memory
- Highlights include works from Tropism: Consequences of a Displaced Memory, digitally altered images from her family’s personal archives
Nhu Xuan Hua’s photos are grounded in the gaps. The French-Vietnamese artist uses her practice to explore rifts in her family’s history and cultural roots. For her, art isn’t just a narrative vehicle, but a lingua franca. It’s a means to communicate when a common language isn’t on the table.
Autograph in London is currently hosting Of Walking on Fire, Hua’s debut UK solo. Unfolding across both galleries of the space, the exhibition offers up dreamlike compositions that reimagine and distort images from her family’s archive, reveling in these gaps of memory, and what remains when met with the refrain: “Why are you asking? The past belongs to the past.”
Raised in Paris after her parents fled the Vietnam War, for Hua, a sense of heritage was always slippery — a result of diasporic hardship, living in a culture that prized assimilation and a communication void between her and parents. Her father, who is oral-deaf, oscillated between spoken Vietnamese and a self-taught version of French Sign Language.
Courtesy Of The Artist And Autograph
Courtesy Of The Artist And Autograph
Peppered throughout the show are works from her series, Tropism: Consequences of a Displaced Memory, digitally altered interventions that deconstruct and piece back muddied memories to create new meaning. For the show, Hua has created a new work, “Little Super in Versailles – Archive from the year ’88” in which a young girl emerges as a restorative force, bearing the weight of inherited histories.
“In recreating scenes from everyday life, drawn from my scattered memories, it is as if events are replayed to reinvent the narrative and the story – a mother eats a slice of bread while watching her children, wondering how to do better,” the artist shared in a recent press statement. “In this quest lies the immense desire to restore the sacred to the most ordinary things.”
Of Walking on Fire is now on view in London through September 19.
Autograph
Rivington Place, 1 Rivington Pl,
London EC2A 3BA,
United Kingdom
