A woman, dressed in orange against a blue screen, tenderly embraces a chicken in her arms. As the chicken clucks, the woman muses aloud whether they’d met in a past life. A photograph of a young woman flickers ever so briefly into view before the camera lens changes, bringing the protagonist into focus. A voice off-camera gently directs her to wait ten seconds before speaking again. Slowly, it becomes clear that the scene’s protagonist is speaking to her adult child about her calamitous escape from Vietnam following the American War.

So begins Into The Violet Belly, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi’s filmic meditation on migration, transformation, and the intergenerational transmission of memory, and the centerpiece of her exhibition, The blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it. Developed in collaboration with the artist’s mother, Thuyen Hoa, Into The Violet Belly collages together multiple narratives, images, time scales, and sonic references. Fragments of Hoa’s migration story intermingle with Vietnam’s creation myth as the film drifts between documentary, mythology, and science fiction, blurring the boundaries between each. Crucially, both narratives remain incomplete—what is withheld is as potent as what is revealed.

Amidst these fragments, Nguyen-Chi offers glimpses of her process; strategically revealing snippets of blue screens and camera lenses, or conversations between the artist, Hoa, and other collaborators during shooting and editing. These glimpses speak to Nguyen-Chi’s ongoing investigation of the boundaries between memory, reality, and imagination, how these are blurred and transformed through the process of telling and “un-telling,”1. and how memories can be transmitted between generations.

The installation of The blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it envelops viewers in chroma key blue, a colour used frequently on film or television sets to allow for the layering of images during post-production. Chroma key blue offers a space of infinite possibility, both within the craft of filmmaking and the imaginative space of cinema. For Nguyen-Chi, the installation is not complete until it is activated by the audience. The chroma key blue situates us, the viewers, as active agents in the installation. We witness the performance of the protagonist’s leap into an oceanic abyss and share space with both mother and daughter as they reflect on her journey, and the revelatory space between life and death, reality and fiction.

1. Jade Barget, “Submerged Mothers: On Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi’s Tidal Embrace,” MOMUS, 21 February 2023.

Banner image: Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, This undreamt of sail is watered by the white wind of the abyss, 2022, installation view, Hamburger Bahnhof. Courtesy: the artist. Photo by: Jens Franke.