Description
Book SynopsisViệt Lê examines contemporary art in Cambodia and Việt Nam to trace the entwinement of militarization, trauma, diaspora, and modernity in Southeast Asian art.
Trade Review“Việt Lê writes with flair and passion of difficult subjects: war, trauma, the art and visual culture of the Vietnamese and Cambodian diasporas. With a critic's nuanced eye and a practitioner's sensitivity, his framings and readings of provocative, complicated work evoke the beauty of the artists' visions and yet always return us to the history and the present of the artists' lives, careers, and countries.
Return Engagements is a brilliant work to which I will return.” -- Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of * The Sympathizer *
“Việt Lê moves the scholarly conversation about displacement away from the traditional state boundaries toward a much-needed examination of diaspora, (un)settlement, and return while offering a capacious rethinking of refugee-ness, displaced personhood, and diasporic selfhood.
Return Engagements is a provocative and compelling work of curatorially driven art criticism.” -- Cathy Schlund-Vials, author of * War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work *
"In this elegantly produced study of contemporary art in Cambodia and Vietnam, Việt Lê explores the multiple valences of return—as a yield that is more than financial, a journey that is deeply personal and a recurrence of history that is multi-temporal." -- Penny Edwards * Sojourn *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xxi
Introduction. Risky Returns, Restagings, and Revolution 1
1. What Remains: Silence, Confrontation, and Traumatic Memory 57
2. The Art Part: Việtt Kiều Artists, Divides and Desires in Sài Gòn 105
3. Personal and Public Archives: Fragments and (Post)Colonial Memory 150
4. Town and Country: Sopheap Pich's and Phan Quang's Urban-Rural Developments 189
Epilogue. Leaving and Returns 239
Notes 245
Bibliography 301
Index 315
