Photography is a crucial medium in the realm of visual politics. The camera, hailed as a tool that could capture reality in its purest, truest form, was dutifully employed by 20th-century Western anthropologists during their travels to record “foreign” cultures under the guise of scientific objectivity. Yet these pictorial methods were far from neutral, often operating through a racialized, Othering lens that manufactured and upheld the imperial imagination, leaving no room for complexity.

In her practice spanning video, installation, and painting, Ho Chi Minh City-born artist Thảo Nguyên Phan seeks to unearth alternative histories within the legacy of French colonization in Vietnam as well as regional folklore. Rather than emphasize a singular truth or dismantle dominant narratives, her aim is to expand cultural memory beyond just coded, hierarchical representations—an endeavor perhaps best exemplified by her ongoing project, Forêt, Femme, Folie (2024– ).