The Line Along the Knot is an exhibition that asks questions about the complexities of migration and finding the through line in these experiences. What is left behind? What are the things carried across bodies of water or stretches of land? What experiences do we hold on to? In this body of work, I am examining the stories of my father and mother and their path from Vietnam and China, focusing on the perspectives of refugees and immigrants of the United States.
The entire exhibition feathers paper mulberry, a plant surviving centuries of migration from East and Southeast Asia to areas in North America. Through its transformations into thread and paper, the material becomes a metaphor for adaption and resiliency. I use paper mulberry as a material to make connections to the past using it in traditional craft processes for Vietnamese papermaking, and Chinese knotting techniques. This has been a way for me to connect to the past through the inherent knowledge that has been passed down through my hands.
The first part of the exhibition shows handmade paper referencing a vast oceanic landscape. The papers look like portraits of an archaeological artifact containing a knotted language embedded into the paper. I am interested in the experiences that we hold on to across bodies of water in the migration journey. Paper is a medium that carries our stories forward.
As the viewer walks through the maze-like structure of nets made from paper mulberry they will find a video process of its construction and personal key in the The installation is set up as a way for one to explore the space, contemplating the path they take. The symbols found along the knots are moments to engage in the questions about migration, rituals of labor, identity, history and our memories through them.
GUZHENG PERFORMANCE
I invite my mother, Julie Yang Kwok, to interpret the installation site through music where she played the guzheng (Chinese traditional zither). Yang explored the connections of personal heritage and voyage and played improvisational guzheng while interpreting the knots within the exhibition space.
Photos and video by Aaron Granat, Jim Escalante, and Veronica Pham
Exhibition Review by Rafael Francisco Salas
“Veronica Y Pham interrogates the complexities and decisions of the immigrant experience in her exhibition “The Line along the Knot.” What must be left behind? What is vital enough to carry along, as heavy and burdensome as it may be? The artist has created a body of work that in itself is a journey across the ocean, a tangle of knotted possessions and emotions, and a coming together of thought and experience through material and memory.
Sheets of handmade paper are hung seamlessly together to create a current of dusty blue lining two walls of the gallery. It is a description of the ocean’s expanse, undulating forms echoing Pham’s family’s journey from China and Vietnam to the United States. The blue paper surrounds a woven fishing net that Pham constructed from mulberry paper. Within the net’s knotted pattern, the artist has festooned small objects, coins and beads, from a distant past. In the center of the netted enclosure, a table displays a film of Pham's hands weaving the net itself, creating her own connective tissue. During the exhibition’s opening, the artist’s mother performed an improvisational composition on a guzheng, a traditional Chinese zither. The performance occurred in and amongst the weave of fishing nets and knots, the hands of the musician echoing the hands of the artist in making.
The far wall is strewn with dried mulberry bark, installed to look like flotsam on the wind, another allusion to movement, migration and to ephemerality. It was a haunting experience. I felt the wind blow this resilient plant through the air, from east to west, across time.”