Quynh Dong
My Paradise, 2012
Single-channel video installation
1920 x 1080, 14:32 min
Edition of 5 + 2 AP
Copyright The Artist
Further images
A sardonic commentary on the yearning for Eden, My Paradise features Quynh Dong’s own parents as protagonists within a dreamlike and kitschy landscape of Vietnamese idealism. She references a myriad...
A sardonic commentary on the yearning for Eden, My Paradise features Quynh Dong’s own parents as protagonists within a dreamlike and kitschy landscape of Vietnamese idealism. She references a myriad of cultural icons, motifs and settings including oriental-styled maquettes of a teahouse, pavilion and half-moon Chinese bridge made by the artist’s father, to reinforce an overblown nostalgia fed by mythic imagery. Within this childlike digitised tableaux, the couple is seemingly self-absorbed: they tend to a garden of enormous flowers; ride flying horses; and gaze in rapture at a rainbow. Unfolding as five chapters in no apparent chronology, the work is the artist’s reflection on her parents’ journey to the West in search of a better life. Marrying both traditional and pop imagery with a garish sensibility, Dong satirises the construct of ‘The Orient’ through the times.