Prune Phi

“Prune Phi is a French artist of Vietnamese descent who explores the history of her family through her work. Installations, videos, photographs and collages help her to transcribe the issues faced by descendants of the Vietnamese diaspora to recollect their past. Using the image of the telephone to describe her cultural heritage, she gives us a moving approach towards her Asian origins and highlights the importance of the transmission of traditions from one generation to the next.

Why did you choose to work on the topics of heritage and transmission ?

These issues have always been central to my work. They deal with identity, family, memory, transmission and the lack of transmission. I started to do research on my Vietnamese origins after the death of my grandfather who embodied this Vietnamese identity. My grandfather arrived in France in the 1950s, at the age of 13. He was sent there by his parents for studies. His family thought that there would be no war and that their son would be able to return to Vietnam. He somehow was isolated in France. The rest of his family, including some of his nieces and nephews, moved to the United States of America much later, when war was declared in Vietnam. My grandfather also lost his initial culture when growing up. He couldn’t speak his mother tongue anymore and was no longer able to communicate deeply in Vietnamese with his family. My work is inspired by this rupture.

My desire to work on my origins also results from the relationship I had my grandmother with whom I often talked. Though she was French, she definitely loved Vietnam and my grandfather’s family history. She could even speak Vietnamese and felt very close to our family members who were living in the United States of America. She acted as a bridge between both sides of my family, and kept in touch with them for a long time.

So I worked on several projects dealing with heritage and transmission. I often ask myself if I am entitled to pursue this research and to which point I can identify myself to this Vietnamese identity. How do my body and my soul reflect this Vietnamese identity ? These are transmission but also non-transmission issues. There are blanks and secrets in our personal history that I manifest in my work through empty spaces, fragmentations or rips.

Unfortunately, one often loses his initial culture when he tries to become integrated in another community…

The question of integration is quite thorny. I understand the desire for integration but deplore the disappearance over the generations of the cultures of our ancestors. For example, I would have really liked to learn to speak Vietnamese with my grandparents. Some diaspora studies demonstrate that descendants of the second-generation are often willing to discover their past. The first generation endured the traumas. Then, the following generation was unaware about what their parents experienced because they did not want to share too painful memories with their children. Nevertheless, the second generation often thinks that these memories should be passed on to the next generation. I think memories should not vanish over time.

As you graduated in fine arts and studied photography at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles, you consider yourself a photographer and an artist at the same time. Your work combines photography to other media. What is your artistic approach ?

I first started studying visual arts because I had already had a first approach to photography and visual arts when I was a teen. At the university, I realized that my practice was mainly related to the photographic image and that is why I wanted to deepen my knowledge related to the image by studying at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles. Finally, I quickly realized that photography would not be enough for me to express my ideas. I mainly use photography to do research and record various things which are the first step in my visual arts practice. I don’t really care about the device when I take pictures; I can use my phone or devices that are not technologically very advanced. These images will then be used as a corpus of material to carry out my works. Indeed, the collages are made from images that I have taken, borrowed from magazines or found on the Internet. I see them more and more as photographic objects rather than collages. It is true that I have a relationship with the image which is quite plural. For example, in the « Long Distance Call » project, I mixed photographs I took with images from advertisements collected from the Little Saigon Mall in San Jose. Sometimes I also have ideas that are not going to be photographic at all. Therefore, if I want to tackle a particular subject, I transcribe it in the form of videos, sculptures or installations that will mix several media. I don’t limit myself to a medium: I use the most relevant forms to express myself.

How do your works reflect your research on heritage and transmission ?

Installations are very important for me. I often deal with the question of remembering and how it comes to the surface and changes over time. Some things will add up and others will be forgotten. It is in this sense that the form of the installation is interesting because it allows me to rearrange a project from one exhibition to another in different ways according to a particular space and time. I don’t want to tell a story that is recent in the same words as an experience from years ago. My installations are like these stories, they are memories told in fragments that evolve over time.

For example, the installation I exhibited at the Centquatre, for the Circulation(s) festival in 2019 consisted of collages spread over a wall and made from large torn and superimposed images. There was also a video as well as collages whose format was smaller compared to what I used to exhibit. In this installation, a hand-written poem also appeared between the collages on the wall. This poem is part of a series I entitled “Food is Love”. My cousin confessed that he was used to these silences and told me that our family will show me their affection by the meals they cook. It tapped into my emotion. As a result, I started to write down the name of all the meals I was offered. These were tokens of their love. Lastly, the video “Karaoke” was also featured: it has no images and text appears on a black background. The letters are gradually colored in yellow as if it was a real karaoke. This project was inspired by my stay at my uncle and aunt’s house in California. They were not willing to talk about our family but the values that were passed from their parents. They taught me meditation in the morning and we often enjoyed karaoke in the evening. My project Karaoke enabled me to blend both experiences through an absence of images and lyrics that would belong to a catchy tune. It could have been a Pop song.These lyrics transcribe the experiences I had with them. I had to face the fact that my Vietnamenese family prefered to keep some memories secret when I lived with them in America. I did not expect to face so many silences. They did not want to talk about our history though I previously explained my project to them. As I could not create certain images, I had to find other ways and used images that were not mine.

“Long Distance Call” led you to carry out other projects such as “Appel Manqué” and “Hang Up”. To what extent are these projects related to your artistic approach ?

“Long Distance Call” was the incentive of my research on my origins. At the end of my trip in the United States of America, I got in touch with Vietnamese students circles because I thought that people of my age have had similar experiences to mine. I wanted to share my experiences and my family stories with them and to know their feelings towards the Vietnamese diaspora. I met students belonging to Vietnamese circles at the University of California, Berkeley and De Anza College not far from where my family lived. I even did charity work in order to bond with families who recently arrived in the United States. I realized quite late that I wanted to work with other members of the Vietnamese community, not only with my family.

When I returned to France, I was invited to participate in the 1+2 Residency – Photography and Sciences – in Toulouse. I wanted to lead a project to do research on the descendants of second-generation Vietnamese and Vietnamese students in France. During the making of this project called “Appel Manqué”, I took part in diverse activities through the circle of Vietnamese students. For example, I helped them to organise the Têt festivities, the Vietnamese New Year. It gave me the opportunity to get in touch with many people of Vietnamese descent. With each person I met, I tried to collect fragments of a narration for my series of collages.

After completing this project, I was offered to be part of the program at the Villa Saigon, an artistic residency organized by the French Institute in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh. Arriving there in March 2020, I wanted to work further on the Vietnamese youth but the sanitary crisis prevented me from connecting with the people I wanted to link to this project : craftsmen, artists, or persons I met on social media beforehand. As I previously travelled in Vietnam in 2019, I relied on the corpus of pictures I took as a tourist at that time. I considered this corpus reflects my own experience in Vietnam and is associated with the Vietnamese youth. Once again, photography was the starting point of my research which is visual. I did not hesitate to pick pictures in my corpus to enlarge and crop them. So the “Hang Up” series deals with Vietnamese youth under various aspects. I reflected on the perception of scooter and party by the young Vietnamese. Scooters represent youth emancipation and enabled me to change my view on movement. I revealed a new aspect of liberty and especially body emancipation through the pictures I took during parties. In my collages, I used scooter stickers usually used for tuning scooters and also vehicle registration plates as frames.

Why are “Long Distance Call”, “Appel Manqué” and “Hang Up” all related to the telephone ? Would you say that your Vietnamese origins are as distant but also as close as a phone call ?

“Long Distance Call” started by a phone call. My grandmother had a phone book which contained the phone number of each member of our family in America. I made several attempts to contact them and some phone numbers were even invalid. After having composed many phone numbers, an uncle eventually recognized me because he heard about me through my grandmother. I told him about my artistic practice and my will to know his family, by living with them for a few months. “Long Distance Call” was born from this first “long distance” call. “Appel Manqué” refers to conversations which never happened, and echoes the missing parts of family histories that were not passed from generation to generation and got lost. The “Hang Up” series title refers to teen phone calls during which we hope that it is our friend and not us who is going to hang up. The vocabulary related to the telephone is the red thread of these three projects I carried out in the United States of America, France and Vietnam.

I am currently working on a project called “Otherworld Communication”. I did research on the custom which consists of burning cardboard or paper artefacts as offerings to deceased family members and that I maintained for my grandfather without really knowing its significance. For him, I used to burn fake bank notes, but nowadays we offer much more diverse types of presents to the spirits of the deceased for their afterlife. During my trip to Vietnam, I noticed that this ancestral tradition has never been forgotten but has evolved along with society. It might be regarded as a contemporary custom as well. For example, I remember that I saw Gucci sneakers in paper being burnt for those who departed. Clothes, scooters, tablets and computers made in paper are also offered. I think this tradition is beautiful and nonsense at the same time. It inspired me a lot for “Otherworld Communication” which is a fictional operator acting as a bridge between the afterlife and our world. It would help electronic devices like the telephone to establish the link between both worlds. I am still reflecting on this project. Maybe these objects might also be burnt with personal messages dedicated to our ancestors. Indeed, it is still related to the telephone.

Can you give us some details about “Otherworld Communication” ?

“Otherworld Communication” is an installation project associating videos with sound sculptures and a soundtrack. The videos show cardboard telecommunication objects burning. I collaborate with another artist, Tal Yaron, to compose the sound pieces. We produce sculptures with carton packaging used for imported Asian products in which we insert speakers. The fictional operator’s message would be delivered through these speakers installed in the exhibition space.

What do you keep in mind from your works on heritage and transmission ?

Every family has her own traumas but it is a shame that some stories are being forgotten. Few people I met told me that they could easily talk about their family stories with relatives. Being incapable of speaking their ancestors’ mother tongue is also an obstacle to the transmission of the family history. Yet, I noticed that there was always a generation, like the one I belong to, who attempts to preserve the memory of their family. It is the specific aspect that I keep in mind regarding my work on heritage and transmission. I think that more and more people want to share their personal history and present it in fictional, narrative or concrete ways. I believe my work participates to build a collective memory.

According to you, how does art contribute to the preservation and transmission of cultural heritage ?

Artists have their own point of view on subjects they consider important. Their opinions are really diverse. Art can reflect an identity, a culture or a heritage, for example. It can be an identity carried on the body or by stories that one has gathered over the years. It is also necessary that artists draw our attention to forgotten stories, social groups under-represented in the public sphere. Art is also intrinsically linked to the viewer, that is to say to the one who will identify with the stories told in the works. Art then has a role of witness and broker of stories. Culture manifests and perpetuates itself through beliefs, the transmission of stories, language, representations, music, architecture, etc. In my practice I collect stories in interviews, I use fragments of images from television documentaries or archive footage. At the same time, I produce photographic or textual corpus that speak of these communities in which I have lived or that I identify with. I almost have an ethnographic approach to my subjects. In this sense, I have the feeling that my projects contribute to both the preservation and the transmission of a cultural heritage. But my approach to art cannot be grounded in reality alone. We need to create fictional worlds to escape and give a subjective point of view on the events that can affect us from near and far. Through narration, it is possible to transform and alleviate the suffering of people who have overcome painful trials by shifting the real to something else, to an elsewhere.

What are your upcoming projects ?

An installation entitled “Topographies” will be on show at La Villette in Paris from March 31st, as part of the exhibition “100%”.
“Hang Up” will be presented at PhotoHanoi21 which will take place in May at Vincom Contemporary Art Center (VCCA) in Hanoï (Vietnam).
“Otherworld communication” will be exhibited at Festival de photographie Fictions documentaires in Carcassonne at the end of the summer. For this project, I work with highschool students on phone correspondences and artwork creation process with a cellphone.”