Elissa Vinh
Sonic resonances: on the formation of Vietnamese diasporic identities across time and borders
Supervisors: Professor Mignon Nixon and Dr. Amanda (Xiao) Ju
Working title: Sonic resonances: on the formation of Vietnamese diasporic identities across time and borders
This research project explores how Vietnamese identities are shaped, negotiated, and reimagined in contemporary art. Inspired by Tina Campt’s theory of listening to images, it engages with the resonances emitted by current curatorial practices in Vietnam, the affect-driven preservation of the An Việt Archives and the work of London-based Vietnamese artists. The exploration of these creative endeavours aims to trace how subjects navigate histories marked by haunting colonial entanglements.
The traumatic history of conflicts in Vietnam has dispersed memories that echo across generations. As they traverse temporalities, cultural reverberations oscillate between forgetting and remembering. In this interstice, a tension central to diasporic experiences emerges. This aligns with Marianna Hirsch’s concept of postmemory which examines the evolution of transgenerational knowledge. Attuned to these sonic resonances, my research foregrounds the intergenerational expansion of narratives from the Vietnamese diaspora in a British-European context, forming what Homi Bhabha conceptualises as a ‘third space’ of cultural negotiation and hybridity. By tracing how memory and history intersect across time and spaces, the project is interested in the evolution of Vietnamese identities. This readdresses the often overlooked transnational British-Vietnamese hybridities overshadowed by the extensive academic and cultural focus on the Vietnam war in a North American context.
My PhD is fully funded by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP) Open Studentship.
Qualifications
- MA in History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 2023-24
- BA in French and Spanish, King’s College London, 2019-23