“perpetual ephemeral: a study of Phở” – Ly Hoàng Ly
video art
date of creation: 2013
– duration: 7:51 mins
– installation dimension: variable
– 5 limited editions + 2 AP
As one of Vietnamese culture’s representative, Phở was resulted from the marriage of
Vietnamese and French gastronomies with more than a hundred-year history only.
Through the French colonial period in Vietnam (1887-1945), French chefs tossed out
all of the beef bones; Vietnamese kitchen helpers collected these discarded bones to create a new dish. The food is a mixture of French (beef, onion, turnip) and Vietnamese (rice noodle, anise flower) ingredients. The transformation of the beef flesh and bones during a 16-hour simmering process inspired the artist to use this determining factor of making Phở, to study how intangible and ever changing the
identity is, and explore the acculturation with its transcendental movement.
Installation Notes/Special Needs:
Media player, projector, speakers and sound-proofing dome
