Recollect, 2013
Hand-bound book
Paper, cardboard, inkjet prints, marker, Japanese masking tape. selected pages Recollect is a constructed "family album" made up of photographs from Mullens' mother's family album. Placing the images in a new context this work explores the lack of information transferred down through the generations, resulting in a convoluted cultural identity. The photographs are reduced through photocopying, illustrating the second-hand interpretation. They are paired with handwritten captions, similar to a family album, but these captions are uninformed as Mullens has no knowledge about the situation in which the photos were taken, or about her family's life in Vietnam before they were forced to leave. The captions are also matched with Vietnamese translations, but as Mullens does not speak Vietnamese (her mother never spoke it at home as she wanted her children to assimilate with Australian culture) Google Translate was used to convert the text. The clunky, muddled translations would be obvious to those who speak Vietnamese, and Mullens draws the viewer's attention to it by crediting Google Translate at the beginning of the album. These captions that don’t actually build on the information already available in the photographs highlight the distance and disconnect and reflect Mullens' relationship to her family, history and homeland. Mullens brings the viewer into her own process of questioning her “authenticity” as a Vietnamese descendent, illustrating layer upon layer of disconnect.
|