Artwork Description
Lien Truong – A Mute Cacophony Inside the Womb
Dimensions: 84 x 72″ finished size
Year: 2021
Medium: oil, silk, acrylic, copper pigment, enamel on canvas
My current work transforms figures from the genre of Orientalist paintings. Recast as silhouettes painted in the palest yellow hue, they repudiate their sexualized and submissive origins. They are given agency, weaponized, engage in acts of self-love, and examine how gestures can both refer to and reject oppressive epistemologies. Bodies emerge out of silk anamorphic shapes, cradled by uncanny silhouettes of Orientalist ancestors. The paintings are a type of Asian Futurism, born from the violent histories descended from Orientalist ideologies; and the trauma, strength and love transcending transnational and generational boundaries, to create narratives of resistance and autonomy.