Between you and the place you believe you thought you knew

The project is collaboration between artists – Ting-Ting Cheng (Taiwan) and La Huy (Vietnam), as the outcome of Cheng’s artist in residency at Zero Station, Ho Chi Minh City, invited by Outsiders Factory for the programme South Country, South of Country.

Cheng is interested in how our impressions towards a city were formed before the actual visit? Is there a gap between the impression and the reality? But is there a reality? Somehow we look for the images that match our impression, and then telling ourselves, “Oh this is place I know.” So how do we decide what is “Saigon”, no matter for Saigonion or foreigners?

Postcards were chosen as the main medium in the project. Cheng intended to ask, why the images on postcards in souvenir stores were chosen to represent the city? Even though the images are not necessarily close to the everyday life, but rather be images that people believe can “represent” the place. What is the “identity” of a country? Are the cultures being preserved and displayed because of the gaze from the others? And is the way we see ourselves influenced by the way others see us?

She used images taken by a local friend and herself to form a set of postcards. On the back of the postcards, there are text in English and Vietnamese. Unlike traditional postcards, they describe different content. The English texts are quotations she found in tourist books, magazines or websites. The Vietnamese texts are written by local residents, about their feelings towards the images.

Cheng raises questions about the concept of East and West, developed and undeveloped, exoticism, westernization and modernism.

Apart from the postcards, the project also includes photography, video and the documents that she collected, mainly before her trip to Vietnam, including tourist guides, magazines, postcards, computer games…etc.