* 'CONFLICTS OF IDENTITIES' Project
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hien Cao was born in Vietnam and grew up in Girona, Spain. She moved to Ireland in 2008 and is based in Galway. She is a textile designer/artist with a special interest in political activism. Art, for her, is a medium of communication, to inform and to engage people of matters that affect our daily life like environmental issues, human rights, fair trade, forced child labour, and animal welfare.
As the daughter of refugees and migrants, she tries to understand the meaning of nationalism and why many fight for their country and defend it with pride. Perhaps she belongs to that generation of lost identity where she has no memory of her childhood in her homeland.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Hien's project, “Conflicts of Identities” consists of pieces of artwork that deal with issues of global humanitarian and social crisis. It analyses the complexity of mixed national and hybrid identities. Forced exile and the migration of people due to conflicts or economic circumstances are the focus of her work. The struggle of Catalonia for Independence and the civil war between Republicans and Loyalists that took place in Northern Ireland are themes that inspired her to research more about the meaning of nationalism and its impact on society and individuals alike. Based on her own experiences, the artist searches for her own origins and her lost identity using documents and stories told by her parents. As a textile artist, she understands the concept of clothing as an instrument of representations of lived experiences. The materials used for the project are carefully selected for their characteristics and meanings in human society. Textile artist and graphic designer, her work is an intersection between craftsmanship and technology. In her practice, she investigates the ways in which cloth communicates with the world and how to use creative artistic actions for political activism without violence. With this project, Hien Cao also explores new sculptural techniques to fuel her creativity. In this unique way, she combines the structural with the textual looking to find the balance between soft and hard in a variety of contexts to illustrate her exploration of political activism.
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