Quynh Dong’s video work In the Banana Forest folds together multiple folkloric concepts as well continues her ongoing examination of stereotypes of Vietnamese and asian cultures. In a scene that is almost dreamlike, gold-green-clad performers sway and dance amongst crackling banana leaves. Silence and rustling interrupt the haunting sound of the suona, a Vietnamese instrument used in funerals. Shot in one take, the Butoh dancers of In the Banana Forest transform the space, moving as wandering souls, banana leaves in conversation with each other, the music and nature. This piece combines elements of dance, music, literature, sculpture and painting into an image of stereotypical asian culture. The composition of the video is inspired by the aesthetics of traditional Vietnamese lacquer paintings.

She draws the imagery of the banana tree and the dancers from Nguyen Tuan’s novel “Vang bóng một thời.” (Echo and Shadow Upon a Time) in which an old executioner were in the banana tree forest in order to train beheading humans by chopping down the trees. In the story verses of a song were wandering in the banana tree forest that Dong interpret as missing souls. Dong invites viewers to look at the golden and green dancing figures not only as a performance or a video, but also the bodies as sculptures. The performers embody the souls and the banana leaves at the same time. She chose to work with Butoh dancers as the genre was developed in the 60s as a reaction against the Japanese dance scene then, based on imitating the West and following Japanese traditional styles, turn away from the Western and to create a new aesthetic that embraced the natural movements that is part of our live. “We are only corpses standing in the shadow of life” Tatsumi Hijikata said. Dong wished to adopt that spirit and philosophy of duality into this work. Dong was also inspired by Japanese essay “In Praise of Shadows” by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, which speaks about Japanese aesthetics, and the use of light and darkness as metaphors for Western and Asian cultures respectively. Tanizaki writes about the appreciation of darkness and subtlety of Asian cultures, and how shadows bring out light as seen in gold. This aesthetic is seen even beyond Japanese art, as we observe it in Vietnamese lacquer paintings where gold is often used to depict nature against the dark coloured wood it is painted on. In Dong’s work, the gold-green silk costumes are both an homage to Nguyen Gia Tris’ lacquer paintings and Tanizaki's Novel.

Although both of these writings seem like stories of loss, mourning and missing, In the Banana Forest does not contain the same melancholy narrative. Rather, Dong thinks about the ‘loss of culture’ not as loss, but as a process of creation through adoption such as in the case of intersections between Vietnamese and Japanese cultures. By taking facets from other cultures and adding to parts of one's own, a new, unique culture is born through this cross-cultural dialogue. In the Banana Forest occupies in-betweens; From the Butoh dancers, whose art form straddles East and West and Male and Female, to the blending of cultures and literature, to the creation of a work that is neither wholly painting, nor wholly video or sculpture Dong’s work implores us to explore all of the grey areas between the borders that we know so well.