Lost in the Reeds, one artwork in the collection Area Code. (Photo courtesy of the artist) Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - The patterns, colours andtechnique of traditional Vietnamese mat weaving are on display in an onlineexhibition through the artworks of Pham Hong Linh.
Due to the pandemic, the exhibition was held online and canbe seen at areacodeartfair.com/pham until August 31.
Visual artist and designer Linh created a video illustratingthe weaving process with the sound recorded from the loom. She made a digitalrendering of the traditional Vietnamese reed mat weaving process.
Through the exhibition Area Code, the artist said she wantsto bring Vietnamese artisanship to a wider audience.
Nguyen Ngọc, a Vietnamese viewer of the exhibition, said shewas in awe of Linh's artworks.
“Vietnamese families always have at least one mat to use allyear round,” Ngoc said.
“A big mat is a place my family gather to have a meal or takea nap in summer. However, I have never known how it is woven.”
“Thanks to Linh's digital artwork, she codes them actually, Inow understand a sophisticated handicraft technique behind a mat,” Ngoc said.
The artworks are inspired by the trade of weaving mat in CamNe village, the central province of Quang Nam, 14km from Da Nang city.
The village was renowned for its colourful and meticuloushand-woven reed mats that were favoured by kings of the Nguyen Dynasty in the19th century. The mat took a day to weave, reed by reed, and had to beperformed by two people using a simple wooden loom. The rustling sound of reedsand the creaking rhythm of the wooden loom were the heartbeats of the village.Now, very few artisans maintain the craft.
“When I was a child growing up in Vietnam, like manyhouseholds back then, my family used to gather around for dinner on a wovenreed mat,” Linh said. “Sometimes the dinner would go on for so long that thereeds left imprints on my skin, a memento of sorts for the time sharedtogether."
“Reed mat weaving is a Vietnamese traditional handicraft buthas now become a vanishing practice due to industrialisation and a shiftinglifestyle. This exhibition is a manifestation of nostalgia, the passing oftraditions, and a desire to grasp onto a craft that situates my memory of home.”
“Cam Ne mats are different from those that originated fromother regions because they are colourful and take much time and effort to make.I want to promote the value of these mats and honour the art of the makers,”she said.
Linh is a Boston-based artist and designer whose work focuseson experimental communication via the convergence of art, technology, andculture. Currently, she is designing self-driving cars.
She holds a BA of Economics from Brown University, an MA inVisual Communication from the Royal College of Art (UK) and is an alumnus ofthe School of Poetic Computation. She is interested in creating interactive andsensorial environments to connect and communicate with others. Some of herworks include explorations of our emotional attachment to smartphones, biasesbehind facial recognition and crime prediction algorithms, and using code tocreate visual poetry.
After 10 years away from Vietnam, Linh hopes to use theskills she’s learned since leaving to remember, reimagine, and recreate herpersonal experience bounded by the two worlds.
All profits from selling artworks will be donated to artisansin Cam Ne village./.
VNA