Lien Truong

Stitch

November 2014

In Stitch, Lien Truong presents a series of paintings that examine contemporary appropriations of culture through textiles and plastic surgery. In 15th and 16th century Orientalism, the west appropriated fashion and aesthetics of the east, warranting Western supremacy and segregation, and eastern foreignness for the purpose of rendering Western dress richer and more exotic. Whereas historical turquerie and chinoiserie once inspired the seduction of faraway exoticism, these representations of the east in our modern-day environment are charged with ideas of the foreign as unsettling, to be avoided.

Truong’s paintings focus on forms that represent acts of assimilation. Through our contemporary lens, adopting culture encompasses and moves beyond the cloth, as surgical means give way to ethnic modification. Derived from mediated images from a specific time, articles of clothing and cultural icons become gestural strokes of oil paint, melting and fading into strokes of color. Stitch examines modern cultural appropriation in our transcultural world.

View Lien Truong on Dose Projects

Exhibition Photography by Sasha Charoensub