HOA-LAN TRAN GALLERY

 

 

LIFE, DEATH AND REBIRTH: A SELF-PORTRAIT

EXHIBIT BY HOA-LAN TRAN

 

 

PART I: LIFE -- CHILDHOOD

 

There are four panels that comprise the first part of my exhibit.  Each panel is composed of two related vertical panels, each with three fields of expression.  The upper panel in all four panels is composed of printed Lotus leaves.  The lotus is a primary symbol of Asia and Asian mysticism: this beautiful flower has its roots in the mud, its stalk in the water, and its heads, its precious bloom, in the air.  In this, the Lotus is much like humanity, living in the three elements of Earth, Water, and Air.  And, of course, in Air, the flower meets its fourth element, FIre, the Sun.

 

The bottom field of all four panels is also composed of elements found in nature: bamboo leaves.  If the lotus, in Asia, is the symbol of man's spiritual nature, the bamboo tree is the symbol of the Asian physical life, reminiscent of the Asian physical form: thin, wispy, elegant but with tremendous strength.  The bamboo is, in many ways, the symbol of Vietnam: it provides shade for the people, but it also provides the house, the chair in the house, the bridge over water, the waterwheel that irrigates the rice paddies, the fishing cages that trap the fish, the boats that carry the fish to market, the hats that the peasants wear in the boats that carry the fish to the market, the woven baskets used to carry fish back from the market.  And the musical instruments played at home late at night before sleeping.

 

Between these two fields of beauty (upper field) and strength and utility (lower field), moves the central image in each of the panels -- the dual images -- are iconographic impressions drawn from my childhood.

 

 

Panel 1: BLACK BUTTERFLY + PLACENTA.  The butterfly is, at first, dark, black, as if appearing from out of the darkness, out of the night of non-being, appearing here on a light, red, dawn-colored background.  The butterfly is a symbol of the soul, an emblem of transformation.  The butterfly is a repeating element in all three parts of the exhibit, an icon in both the Life and the Re-Birth Sections -- and absent in the Death section.  The placenta, with its intricate, suggestive shape, is a first home that is eventually abandoned in the process of birth, a tree, too -- a Tree of Life -- in this case green with fertility.  The placenta connects the child to the invisible mother who nurtures the life that is underwater, swimming in the ocean of the womb. 

      The green placenta, in this panel, is placed in a brown field embedded with rudimentary shapes of Nom language characters, the original classic Vietnamese script developed from Chinese parental roots.  The placenta also represents, in a very real sense, my own birth in to the world -- set in the context of the historical language of my culture.

 

 

Panel 2: MY NAME IN NOM LANGUAGE; SECTION OF A BANANA FLOWER.  The first central image in the second panel is a rendering in Nom language of my own name, in the form of a square.  This is juxtaposed with the cross section of a banana flower bud, roughly circular in form.  The banana flower is important to me personally because it is a primal memory of my own life: there was an orchard across from my childhood home in Saigon with a grove of banana trees.  Also, banana leaves were used during New Year's celebration -- another symbol of re-birth -- in Vietnam to wrap rice cakes, sustenance for both the body and the spirit.  The cross-section of the banana bud shows an intricate structure of a spiral unwinding in triplicate chambers, from the center out, one after the other.  The banana flower is set in a black and white (cloud) field in which is embedded a famous Vietnamese poem: 'His Soul Is Bleeding" written by Han Mac Tu, a famous 20th Century Vietnamese poet who was born In Phan Thiet, the birthplace of my father.

 

 

 

Panel 3: RED POMEGRANATE; WOVEN LID TO A STEAMER (BAMBOO).  In Vietnam, the pomegranate is considered an aristocratic, poetic fruit  -- what the orchid is to the world of flowers.  Both, in fact, are emblems of the female principle.  Pomegranate bushes grew in my family's garden -- the brilliance of the red fruit used to set our garden on fire during late autumn fruiting.  The pomegranate is a symbol of fruitfulness, prosperity, and love -- if the roots of the pomegranate are separated, they will twist themselves back together.  Like the banana flower, the pomegranate's internal structure is complex, expanding upward in a spiral unwinding.  The image of the pomegranate in this panel is cut in a vertical cross-section, showing the center of the fruit in its entirely, from top to bottom -- the seeds are housed in the own chambers, membranes, a seed pod again, like the Earth itself, generating life.  Each seed is also reminiscent of a small lantern surrounded by red cellophane paper, lanterns that once lit the nights of my childhood. 

      The fruit of the pomegranate is both sour and sweet -- representing the duality of yin and yang, darkness and light, female and male. 

      The central image juxtaposed to the pomegranate is a very mundane object, the opposite of the aristocrat's poetic emblem of femininity: the woven lid of a cooking steamer, a kitchen utensil, representing a different, but just as real, aspect of femininity, that of the mother, the keeper of the house.  The object is also reminiscent of the 'non la', the conical hat generally worn by Vietnamese peasants working in the fields.  Again, this woven object made of bamboo connects to everyday folk life in Vietnam.  The steamer, of course, also connects symbolically to rice, the fundamental staple of Vietnam.

 

 

Panel 4: RED BUTTERFLY, TRANSFORMATION OF THE SOUL; OLD VIETNAMESE PEASANT WOMAN CARRYING WOOD.  In the fourth panel, the butterfly re-appears, this time colored bright red, the color of the pomegranate.  This seems to represent my own transition from child to adulthood.  The butterfly and the pomegranate are related, red with life, red with fertility.  Juxtaposed to this image of blossoming womanhood is its opposite: the image of a bent old woman, carrying a load of wood in that ubiquitous bamboo-woven basket, wearing that ubiquitous bamboo-woven peasant hat, the non la, the old woman twisted from years of labor like the tree itself becomes twisted.  Next to the emblem of the lively young girl becoming a woman is this grandmother figure, who is carrying her load much as the baby carries its own load in the womb, the placenta of its worldly possessions.

 

Through this first part of the exhibit, the wind is blowing gently, rhythmically, over a pond, through the lotus leaves along the tops of the four panels, and through the bamboo leaves on the bottoms of each panel.  Then this gentle wind gives way to a more angry wind.

 

PART II.  DEATH -- RE-EDUCATION

 

In 1975, the world I had known for about 17 years ended suddenly.  In some ways, I abandoned the placenta of my own innocent childhood.  When tanks from communist North Vietnam rolled in to Saigon, the world I had known completely disappeared and was replaced with a revolutionary government which sought to re-create the cultural memory of the South Vietnamese.  This marked the beginning of ten years in my own and my family's life of loss, darkness and re-education.

 

 

Panel 5.  Death #1: Physical Death

 

 

Panel 6.  Death #2: Cultural Death

 

 

Panel 7.  Death #3: Spiritual Death

 

PART III.  RE-BIRTH

 

Out of the flames of death rises the Phoenix, the Bird of Re-Birth.

      The third part of this exhibit -- again four panels, like the Life section -- represents my coming to America in 1985.  Again, each of these four panels is composed of three parts: in the top panel is a frontal view of the crown worn by the Lady Freedom in the Statue of Liberty.  This crown is still surrounded, as a reminder, by the halo of thorns. 

     

The central image of each of these four panels is a silhouette of a seated Vietnamese woman (my own 'background') upon which is printed the serpentine map of Vietnam.  Each of the four panels has a different icon in the heart -- and also a different 'pattern' or mark-making in the woman's dress. 

     

This is the synthesized figure, myself, who carries her history, the Old World, with her, married to the promise of fthe future in the New World.

 

 

 

Panel 1: The image in the heart is, again, the butterfly -- this time red, like the fire from which it is born.  The woman's dress is white and black (dark brown (sepia), in fact).  This represents a polarized experience -- from which the butterfly is being reborn.  The mark-making in the dress is a kind of dream script that is not Vietnamese, nor French, nor English, but a kind of automatic writing, an automatic script resembling wave formations.  A cultured life (the life of the individual) is returning.  Hand-writing is being re-born.  THE ART IS WRITING.

 

 

Panel 2: The image in the heart is the Magnolia Seed Pod.  This hearkens back to the natural world of the first stage of life (the banana flower and the pomegranate) -- the image of the seed pod again suggests fruitfulness, prosperity, the future.  The seeds of creativity are always present -- they, too, re-appear after a period of darkness, or dormancy.  The woman's dress now is red; and the mark-making on the dress is the artist's own hand-print.  The individual identity of culture has returned -- literally, finger-painting.  THE ART IS FINE ARTS..

 

 

Panel 3.  The image in the heart is the house, the home -- my new home in America -- earth-toned again, on a dark-blue dress.  The white mark on blue background in the dress suggests an architectural drawing.  The dress, in fact, suggets an architectural blueprint.  THE ART IS ARCHITECTURE.

 

 

Panel 4.  The image in the heart is a conch shell from the sea.  It's shape is reminiscent of the ear itself.  The dress is yellow; and the marks on the dress are musical notes (a treble clef sign).  THE ART IS MUSIC.

 

The progress of these four panels, in a very literal way, represents my own development in America: first I learned the language; next I attended architecture school and took a degree in architecture; I then studied fine arts taking degrees in painting and printmaking; then I studied music,  studying both voice and the piano. 

      The door of opportunity opened very wide in America, allowing my artistic nature to come back out again, after a long period of dormancy. 

 

SUMMARY

 

In writing this exhibit statement, I focused on the ideas underlying the created images of the exhibit.  I did not speak much about the printmaking technique.  This exhibit includes examples of many printmaking techniques: collagraph, etching, silk-screen, chine collŽ and, mostly, woodcut.  Many images are printed directly from nature: the lotus and the bamboo leaves; the charred planks that barricade the church door, and my hand-print.  My primary printmaking media has been woodcut however.

     

The color palette moves intentionally from the earth tones (natural tones) of Vietnam in the Life section to the polarized colors of red and black in the Death section to the vibrant colors of a larger, freer world in the Re-Birth section.

     

The paper used in each section is different.  The Life section is printed on delicate rice-paper made in Vietnam, which I have waxed, giving the print a surprisingly sturdy, translucent, almost reflective quality.  The Death section is printed on hand-made Amate paper (which I made) from kozo fiber cooked with soda ash and beat with stone, still earthy but rough and dense, rigid and coarse.  The Rebirth section is printed on very refined, sophisticated mulberry paper (imported from Japan), one of the finest of printmaking paper.

     

This exhibit is, in every way, my self-portrait.

 

 

Hoa-Lan Tran can be reached at:

trandesign@mindspring.com

 

Return to Hoa-Lan Tran / Michael J. Clark Portfolios page;

http://www.hoalantrangallery.com/HLT1.htm

 

Return to Hoa-Lan Tran Printmaking page:

http://www.hoalantrangallery.com/HLT3.htm

 

Go to Hoa-Lan Tran MFA Project Prinkmaking page:

http://www.hoalantrangallery.com/HLTPrintmaking2.htm