Identity
2016
US Passport, eggshells
The power that resides in paper has often struck me as strange. The fluid shape of a life and an identity is circumscribed (and supposedly certified) by repurposed tree flakes – or, as they are usually known, documents. During the fall of Saigon, my father, a South Vietnamese naval officer, was advised to shred all documentation of his identity. From paper to pulp, our place in this world is so preciously fragile. Hope is a difficult thing. However naïvely utopian it may be, I hope that humankind will one day build a world in which the essentially random facts of birth – location, language, ethnicity, etc. – do not make any port unpassable.
Was Vermisst Du? / What do you miss?, 2016, Berlin
Outdoor installation, made from single socks
