Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) presents Erasure, a newly commissioned work by Vietnamese artist Dinh Q. Lê – an interactive sculptural and video installation that draws on recent debates in Australia concerning refugees and asylum seekers.

The darkened gallery space will be dominated by a floor-to-ceiling moving image of an 18th century tall ship beached on an isolated coastline slowly being consumed by flames. The gallery floor will be strewn with small islands of debris – discarded clothing and wooden fragments. Amid the destruction will be thousands of small black and white photographs – self-portraits, family and passport photos – which Dinh spent years buying in second-hand stores in the hope of finding his own family’s pictures.

During the exhibition, visitors are encouraged to pick up these photographs which will be removed one by one, scanned, catalogued, stored and uploaded to a purpose built website for people to browse through this collection of oan hon (lost souls) and perhaps find their own families.

Born in Vietnam in 1968, Lê moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1979 after conflict escalated  between the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge near their village at the Cambodian border. As a refugee himself, Lê was motivated to produce Erasure by the tragic sinking of an asylum seeker’s boat off Christmas Island in December 2010. Layered and fragile memory is at the core of Lê’s work. His practice challenges how our memories are recalled and how society archives the evidence of human suffering. Lê’s work elucidates his commitment to the artistic process as a means of excavating history and the uncovering and revealing of alternate ideas of loss and redemption.

Erasure is a new commission and a curatorial collaboration between SCAF and Zoe Butt, co-director and curator, San Art, Ho Chi Minh City. This is Lê’s first solo exhibition in Australia. 

Proudly supported by Nicholas and Angela Curtis