What Are We Looking at?

Okay, without remembering anything at all we are still faced with a female figure whose flying hair is reminiscent of wings. Both of her hands are touching a string or wire and, if it carries a charge, electrostatic hair may be one of the immediate explanations. On closer examination though, the hair has not turned to frizz nor is it smoking, so electrical shock is ruled out. The body language is wrong too. Physically, it looks like a strong wind is blowing her hair, yet it leaves her white dress and posture unaffected. The string appears to have tension on it. It crisscrosses in and out of the frame. Where it goes beyond or how far, we will have to guess. Despite the tension that keeps the string in a straight line from the points where it is anchored there appears to be a degree of flexibility, possibly elasticity in it.

Where it is gently pulled and held, the straight trajectory is broken, not really altering its course but via another anchor point that breaks one straight line into two. A dance that teaches us geometry then? An aesthetic element that dissects the body into uneven parts? Frames within the frame, including the fruit on the table from apparently the four corners of the world. A dream, maybe? Despite the extensive and delicately embroidered dress it looks loose, as if designed for comfortable sleep rather than street clothing.

If we were able to step back, zoom out, would the construct reveal more? Might we see a web? Is she caught in it or building it? All that seems wrong. To me she appears to be listening to it. It does not appear to cause physical distress when the circuit is closed but it is like an insight that is being conveyed, roiling her head but not her body. What would happen if she closed the circuit elsewhere? Would her body act as an efficient conductor of the string to shut off part of the grid, the net. Is this the construct that we are looking at?

Is this about choice versus the preordained? Is it about Karma that we cannot change, only merely adjust?

How Can the Image Be Interpreted?

Investigating an image can be a bit like detective work. Even though we aren’t looking at a crime scene, unless faced with law enforcement imagery, surveillance, forensic, or archived evidence, we may want to eliminate what we can easily understand and focus on that which we don’t yet know. This keeps us trapped in the image until the whole thing makes sense. As we know, this investigation is different for everyone. For many the joy of the image may lie exactly in the fact that it does not answer back easily and the unresolved questions become the very essence of enjoyment for them. For others it may be the invisible wind taking the subject on an inner journey. The apparent haze through which we encounter what we see may be the entry point that resonates; for others, it will be the fruit, or the dress, or the dance, or plenty of other elements we have left unaddressed.

For me it is the red string.

We know it has some flex in it. Enough tensile strength to be stretched into a straight line and that it is red. A red line, we’ve already said this but maybe we missed what it might mean the first time around: the red line. Most subway systems have them. So does everything with a heart. The heart, our central station, pumps blood along our arteries and the veins. However, no train track or blood vessel travels in a straight line for long. Even abstracted subway maps have curves in them. So what line is red and connects in straight increments? Yes, that most intimate of things, our history, genetically and culturally; our bloodline.

Now the haze and hair make perfect sense too. So much is murky for most in relation to their ancestry. Even if genealogical records span centuries, eventually the dust of time will cover the line and make the trail go cold.

FIGURE 31.2 Nom du Théâtre—Lucy. © Trang Vu

My bloodline, your bloodline. It might have been separate for millennia, but somewhere under that pile of dust, even time can’t deny that it will eventually cross, along with that of the rest of humanity—and going much further back, everything that emerged from earth’s elements in the primordial sea.

Vu, among other things, is reminding us that our family dynamics and identities play out over generations. This is possibly not entirely understandable from the perspective of one lifetime alone, that the single link our lives represent connect to other links and, eventually, to everything in the end. Maybe some of Vu’s ancestors were Boat People. Maybe she is touching the string where the choppy sea blows wind into that chapter of her red string. I suppose we all have a red string. We are born with it.

Whatever image one might expect to follow in the series, it probably wouldn’t be this one. Nevertheless, there are visually consistent threads; the red string has been replaced with red stilettos; the white nightdress with a white tutu, albeit one that doesn’t leave much to the imagination, at least from this vantage point. So what we are looking at now and why?

What Are We Looking at?

The haze remains, the fruit is replaced with flowers. The subject is dissolving into white space. What is front and center is arguably the reproductive area of her body with the red shoes. This grown-up version of Dorothy is most definitely not in Kansas anymore. Nor does it look like she clicked her heels to disappear in a vortex of wind as before but instead the white light. An experience frequently described during near-death experiences. In that regard the image does tie in with its predecessor. We are reminded of where life starts and what we possibly see when it ends. While the previous image was dominated with linearity this one deals with circularity. We see images like this of women’s bodies in the context of beaches and even in beach volleyball. So why would this image be seen as sexualized objectification as some students thought of it?

After all, it looks like the woman is escaping. She uses a chair to do so, but in this image it reads like a ladder. How many women still experience sexual harassment in the workplace? How many women who have succeeded in climbing ladders have their accomplishments dismissed as having slept their way to the top? And even if that were true, why would that be an indictment of the women instead of the man or men? It would be the men abusing their power.

How Can the Image Be Interpreted?

As in the previous chapter these images could be loosely categorized as self-portraits or performance art. The artist has total control over her body and how it is portrayed. Who is anyone to say how women or anyone should portray her or himself? These images are carefully constructed and conceived, leaving little doubt that the maker was fully aware of the likely criticism that might be leveled at her.

So why did she do it? We can’t be sure but we can speculate. The most obvious answer may not be found in images but in words. Racial slurs have been adopted by those at whom they have been directed for centuries. Why? To redefine ownership and whom such words empower. Is it really a surprise then that women may do the same? That they take of their bodies the very thing that has either been objectified and for which they have simultaneously been shamed for millennia. And here I am made to eat my own words again. Sometimes context is highly relevant. We live in a time when something can be said and shown that literally assumes opposite meaning, entirely defined by context.

Regardless of how close we can get on our own and how much we can be helped along by the artist, hopefully this will lead to an evolution in linguistic and visual perception where meaning gets recontextualized in such a way that eventually, even if the roots are not forgotten, we can’t take anything for granted and have to listen and look in more nuanced ways. And right there all of us may grow up a little more and have an opportunity to escape what we claim as culturally unassailable or hardwired by nature.

Conclusion

We have done it many times in our evolution. We must be careful then that we don’t prevent the exploited or displaced from redefining themselves on their own terms in order to avoid our own sense of guilt or discomfort. For as long as we believe in freedom of speech and, therefore, even make the sacrifice of tolerating hate speech, we must be very mindful that we keep perspective, that outrage remains proportional to what we see or hear. If not, we run the risk, with the best of intentions, to turn political and cultural correctness not into a tool for genuinely changing verbal and visual rhetoric into something more aware and respectful, but rather into just another tool for shaming, condemning, and dismissing. In that way Vu may simply warn us about what it is exactly that we pass on in our bloodlines, that which is so much more than DNA.