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​who once lay down here?

2025

Textile Installation

Used U.S. miliary uniform, used clothing, bead, sequin, mirror

who once lay down here? This new experimental work by Xuân-Hạ focuses on textile installation to investigate the confluence of material memory, historical migration, and the deconstruction of forgotten historical narratives, inspired by the “hootchie”[1] – a shelter used during wartime to protect soldiers and conceal them beneath the shadow of trees.

During the Vietnam War, the US military used a camouflage pattern called ERDL Pattern (Engineer Research and Development Laboratory) in 1948. The ERDL pattern features a leaf pattern with interwoven color patches simulating the Vietnamese jungle environment, well-suited to the tropical rainforest conditions of Southeast Asia, where US soldiers faced a complex environment full of trees and shadows. After the Vietnam War, the ERDL Pattern became the foundation for modern camouflage patterns.

Through a meticulous process of deconstruction, the artist dissects the military uniform, separating its four constituent colors to dismantle the camouflage pattern's inherent function. This intervention reimagines camouflage not as a tool for concealment, but as a means of revealing the hidden stories embedded within its very fabric. Each fragment of the military uniform is then attached to textiles sourced from the clothing of Vietnamese diaspora and Burmese migrants currently residing in Thailand. These individuals, forcibly displaced from their homelands as a consequence of war and political instability, carry within their garments the echoes of their forced migrations. This underscores how individuals displaced by conflict are compelled to navigate unfamiliar environments, often adapting to new contexts to survive and thrive in their new realities.

The reflective mirror invites audiences to introspect on their own positionality within these narratives, who once lay down here?. As a half-entity, our understanding of war and its history is inherently partial and distorted. The illusion created by the mirror further destabilizes the temporal boundary between past and present, hinting at the enduring presence of war's haunting legacies.

 

[1] “Hootchie” or “hutchie” is the slang term for the Australian Army’s Shelter, Individual – NSN 8465-66- 013-5032. The hootchie is a sheet of 70D nylon or PU-coated cotton with various press snaps and webbing tape loops attached around the outside which allow it to be used in a variety of configurations such as – Tarp tent, Hammock tarp, Improvised hammock (heavyweight ones only), Swag (bedroll cover), Sleeping bag (best used with a wool blanket or nylon poncho liner), Groundsheet, Fighting position cover, Waterproofing sheet for bundling up equipment during water crossings, Trailer or open-top vehicle cover (when stationary), Solar still sheet (so says the Australian army’s survival pam). Source: https://thejungleisneutral.wordpress.com/tag/vietnam-war/

Installation view at the exhibition Form Before Fusion at Balai Seni Maybank, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A part of the Maybank Foundation Artist Fellowship Programme (MFAFP) Cohort 2 in partnership with Kakiseni. 

​Photo: Kakiseni

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