[JWD ART SPACE] A Life Beyond Boundaries (The Geography of Belonging): Artists in Focus Series
Articles & Posts (EN)Ly Hoàng Ly
Evoking her homeland Vietnam, thousands of kilometers away, the work 0395A.ĐC, which encompasses the photography series Ashes, was created by multidisciplinary artist Ly Hoàng Ly while residing in 2011 in Chicago for her residency. In this project the artist ventures into identity and belonging through memory as a way to unleash the emotions that emerge from the search for identity—hers and of her own country.
“I define the whole process of selecting and buying the bones at the market, making the broth of Phở and finally casting the residual bones as my durational performance piece.”
-Ly Hoang Ly
As we see in the video Perpetual Ephemeral: A study of Phở, the cow bones were stewed for 12 hours to make the broth for Phở. After that they were washed and treated carefully with bleach. After the bones dried, Ly Hoàng Ly worked with them through the process of casting. They then were dipped in the colloidal slurry with many steps to build a hard layer around the bones. They were burned in a ceramic shell kiln at approximately 980 Celsius degree for one day, including the cooling process. After that, hot bronze was poured into the ceramic shells and together with the ash remnants of the bones and ceramic shells, these sculptures were formed as hybrid substances. This process was conducted at SAIC World Famous Foundry in Chicago, USA, in 2013 through the metal casting and foundry process.
The photographs represent captures of the sculptures “Ash”. Each photograph opens a unique universe where concepts such as portrait and image and that of space, time, and energy appear vividly. The sculptures’ expansion, transformation, entanglement occur in small objects that fit the palms of a human hand thus exposing notions of fragility, solidarity, and harmony.
Explore Ly’s work from the video ‘Artist in Focus’