Ben Valentine : Photographing the Forgotten Vietnamese Widows of Japanese WWII Soldiers (original) (raw)
[ndlr] Signalement d’un article intéressant sur une exposition photographique de Phan Quang à Ho Chi Minh-Ville.
When we talk about Japan and Vietnam in the 1940s, we discuss World War II, invasions, colonialism, and other monumental events that unfolded in this part of the world, but sent ripples across the globe. These grand historical narratives are crude tools used to summarize — but that never fully explain — what happened. In Vietnam, as in most countries, the way we remember such histories is embedded with propaganda. The stories we don’t tell, the names we forget, the people we don’t eulogize are greater in number by far than the ones we do. Vietnamese conceptual artist Phan Quang’s new series on view at Ho Chi Minh City’s Blanc Art Space, Re/Cover, is an evocative micro-history lost to most textbooks, but important nonetheless.
In 2011, Phan began researching Vietnamese women who had children with Japanese soldiers between 1940 and 1955. Although Japan was defeated and officially left Vietnam in 1945, some soldiers stayed behind until 1954–55, when their government demanded their return. Within that short window of time, when the whole world was at war and then struggling to rebuild, some Vietnamese women and Japanese soldiers fell in love and had children. While Vietnamese history decries and demonizes the invasion, and would try to ostracize these children as the products of prostitution or rapes by invaders, Phan began to find very different stories, many of them touching stories of love and remembrance, stories that did not fit into the dominant narrative.
Lire la suite : Hyperallergic, 19/07/2016.
Phan Quang’s Re/Cover is on view at Blanc Art Gallery (57 D Tu Xuong Street, District 3, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) through July 20.
Image “à la une” : Phan Quang, “Re/Cover no. 5” (2013) © Phan Quang
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
indomemoires (20 juillet 2016). Ben Valentine : Photographing the Forgotten Vietnamese Widows of Japanese WWII Soldiers. Mémoires d'Indochine. Consulté le 14 novembre 2024 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/q5o2