FADING

MARKS
 FADING MARKS
Exhibition Dates 26 July to 2 September 2017 / Opening Night 28 July 2017
With catalogue contributions by Toby Vue & Pat Hoffie
 C O NTENTS
FORE V E RWA R & T H E INFORM E D IM A G INA T ION
Pat Hoffie 2
T H E FA D ING
M A RK S S E RIE S 6
H E RE RE T OL D ,
T H E RE UNFA D E D 14
A S H E E P ’ S RE D L A ND /
A N UNBURNT A L T A R FOR S P IRIT S BURNT 18
CH A ND E L IE R FOR A
G RE A T P L A CE T O H A V E A WA R 22
u said u scare,
us care is aid 26
A M ONUM E NT FOR T H E
D E L IV E RE D G OOD S OF WA R & S URV IV A L 30
UNL IV E D , L IV E D WA R M E M ORIE S COA L E S CE T O S H A P E ID E NT IT IE S
Toby Tou Vue 34
A RT IS T
CV 38

02
Villagers in Ban Napia, Laos, harvest their fields for
shrapnel left over from a war that history sometimes
describes as the Laotian Civil War. This particular
title is misleading; it masks the extent of US
intervention through the CIA. Other sources describe it
as the Second Indochina War, and yet others, committed
to rendering the CIA’s involvement more transparent,
describe it as the Secret War in Laos. No matter the
title, all official accounts agree that the war began
in 1953 and ended in 1975, during which time a tenth of
Laos’ population had been killed.
However the perception of where things begin and end are
as open to interpretation as titles; for those who have
remained in Laos since then, the war endures, with the
death toll continuing to rise on a daily basis. Since
its official ‘ending’, an estimated twenty thousand
deaths and injuries have continued to mount as the
unexploded bombs (UXOs) that litter the pastures carry
out their deadly task whenever villagers stumble across
them.i
The Laotian villagers of Ban Napia are gleaners who
work the war-torn agricultural fields for shards. In
1857 that same subject matter - The Gleaners - had
also provided a grim subject matter for Jean-Francois
FOR E VE R W AR & TH E
INFOR ME D IMAG INATIO N
Pa t H o f f i e, Ju l y 2 0 1 7
Millet’s figures in his iconic painting of peasants from
the lowest ranks of rural poor searching for grains of
sustenance after the harvest. But in post-war Laos,
the lethal shrapnel once packed into the US-produced
bombs and landmines are the residue of an infinitely
more execrable harvest. And yet despite their obvious
differences, a thread of continuity reaches across the
cultures and the centuries in these visual metaphors:
both speak to the will to survive in the face of almost
overwhelming odds, indifference and persecution.
Each day in Ban Napia the villagers return from the
fields to begin the ironic task of refurnishing the
metal shards into knick-knacks for the tourist market.
The financial returns are small, but there’s bitter
irony in the cultural repatriation of the deadly
evidence back to where it came from in the form of
tourist mementos. These cultural objects that are beaten
into the shape of ordinary metal spoons each comes with
a bleak reminder that the wages of war continue to
impact the lives of those who have survived.ii
The villagers of Ban Napia make no claim to be artists,
yet their products are cultural responses to a situation
where the enormity of physical threat is matched by the
threat of emotional, social and cultural annihilation.
As such the artefacts they produce are evidence of
resistance and survival. Therefore, it could be argued,
their particular cultural products are part of an
ongoing legacy of cultural responses that have moved us
to think about the effects of warfare, and the power of
resistance.iii
There are those who might see these small acts – these
re-fashionings of war weaponry into spoons and mementos
- as tiny acts of hope, and there are others who might
see such acts as pathetically futile attempts to face
off the juggernaut of international political will.
In 1967 American photographer Bernie Boston captured
an image of a young Vietnam War protester inserting a
carnation into the barrel of a soldier’s rifle. At first
the image – titled Flower Power – was dismissed by his
editor at the Washington Star as of little interest. Yet
Boston continued to exhibit the image; it caught hold of
the public’s attention until it became a veritable icon
of the antiwar movement of the sixties and seventies.
The image, it could be argued, did nothing to stop the
war. Yet it was a rallying icon that gave communities
across the world a sense that they were not alone in
opposing the will to war.
There’s a big gap in time and context between these
cultural productions – between the metal shrapnel
trinkets of Ban Napia and Bernie Boston’s Flower Power.
And there’s just as wide a gap in terms of how the
contemporary global cultural world might categorise
them. Yet despite such differences, each of these
cultural productions share traits of being both futile
as well as hopeful– and knowingly so; they are acts that
link their makers to a motion that reverses, in however
small a measure, an ongoing cycle of destruction.
Unlike either the social documentary photography
of Bernie Boston or the trinkets of the Ban Napia 03
villagers, Vanghoua Anthony Vue’s recent installations
are neither propaganda nor product; neither metaphor nor
merchandise. His choice of imagery eschews the vivid
direct visual representation that once, only decades
ago, may have proved effective in shifting the ways a
less visually sophisticated public thought about the
world. Now, in a world swamped and suffocated by visual
data, direct representational image-making has lost
much of its power to shock viewers into any kind of
re-thinking. We’ve been deluged by images detailing the
effects of war til our daily lives drown in them; the
rhythm of our everyday continues against the background
cacophony of the stats and data of wars waged elsewhere.
Yet we struggle to see how all this relates to each of
us.
Vue sidesteps the explicit visualization of news
reportage; instead, his visual works push back against
clarity. For the suite of paintings titled Fading
Marks, shrouds and mists are as important aspects of the
subject matter as the forms they envelop. Doubts about
the precision of boundaries and shapes take over, and
any convictions about the capacity to sustain a ‘clear
picture’ vaporizes like mist. We – the viewers – are
left wondering about the wraiths that we only half
understand.
Vue’s focus on the longer term effects of the Secret
War in Laos raises issues that reverberate beyond
the immediate subject matter. The work’s capacity
to resonate gains a great deal from the clarity and
singularity of its concentration on that particular
 war, even though he could have looked more broadly,
for the effects of colonization on the Hmong had begun
04 centuries earlier, when the French presence in Indochina
had centralized control of Hmong affairs, redistributing
and unbalancing existing clan power-relationships.iv
But the subject matter of this series rubs shoulders
with Vue’s own daily life. The artist has gleaned
shrapnel from various fields of information: from
histories; from archival footage; from fiction, from
personal as well as historical documentation, and, much
closer to home, from his father’s memories of fighting
in that war. The artist’s father, Chue Xeng Vue, who
has lived in Cairns for a number of decades where he
raised his family, was once a child soldier in an army
of tens of thousands of troops enlisted by the US to
fight against pro-communists forces. The local Hmong
members of that army were deployed in the vanguard of
skirmishes planned to provide a bulwark to stop the
spread of communism from North Vietnam and China into
other countries in South East Asia.
Vue’s exhibition is not an attempt to refabricate any
specific sense of a war in terms of facts, data and
analysis. The artist leaves that kind of avoirdupois
to the war-mongers and historians. Instead, the artist
focuses on inconsistencies, on incommensurability, on
those points where we can never be quite sure what
side we are on, in order to open our thinking to new
possibilities – ones where familiar boundaries have
eroded and where new forms still have potential to
coalesce.
The artist uses the subject of this particular war to
consider the ways history impinges on the present, how
facts mutate and shape-shift according to the telling,
and how deceit and duplicitousness leave long-term
scars. He uses a range of materials and approaches –
bits of this and that assembled into re-aggregations
that are more than the sum of their parts. And although
the subject of the work is one particular war, Vue
uses this to simultaneously take critical aim at the
role of art, artifice and culture, in order to prompt
questions about possible links and connections between
these and warfare. In one work, using the Hmong practice
of paper cut-outs used as spirit money (ntshuas ntawv)
in religious ceremonies, he has assembled an enormous
chandelier made from documentary films of the war. But
any light this chandelier sheds falls only on the cost
of its opulence; the clusters of cut-outs resemble the
silhouettes of munitions, so that the link between
western cultural riches and the spoils of war is
inextricably entwined.
Vue uses a range of approaches and materials both
ephemeral and tangible; weaving each into the other
in ways that dissolve the material world into the
transient.
In terms of CIA analysis, their Secret War in Laos
was a success: Hmong troops had proven to be far more
effective in keeping local strongholds than had been
expected, approval for the war had successfully avoided
congressional interference, and American casualties were
minimal. Most importantly, the war proved to be a useful
‘test case’ that provided a model for other campaigns to
come in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Syria.
When the Secret War in Laos had ceased to be strategic
to the US, they signed a peace agreement with North
Vietnam, simultaneously abandoning their Hmong allies
to their fate. Two hundred thousand Laotians had died
during the war, among them 30,000 Hmong. Those Hmong
who had managed to survive were now left with no option
but to flee across the border into Thailand, where many
still live.
To this day official records do not recognize that the
US was at war in Laos, even though air attack on the
country averaged “one planeload of bombs dropping every
eight minutes” for the decade between the 1960s and 70s.
And as Vanghoua Anthony Vue writes, for those who took
part in that war, memories overlay and impinge on the
reality of the present. He describes how, for his father
Chue Xeng Vue, “the past remains a constant presence,
projected onto the landscape of the present home in
tropical Far North Queensland”.v Memories and experience
all too often seem to have come from another place,
another time than that described in accounts sanctioned
by official history.
Art does not set out to correct such discrepancies. Only
rarely does it attempt to ‘set the record straight’. And
art may no longer allow itself the conceit of imagining
it’s possible to change the ways of the world. But art
can, and sometimes does, manage to conjure up ‘the
shadows and presence of the past’ into our lives in the
here and now. When it does, it can offer us glimpses ‘of
people and places that have since faded’ in ways that
are palpable and real.
In a recent interview, historical novelist Dame Hilary
Mantel stated: “The novelist starts earning her money
at the point where the facts run out; where the records
fade; where for one reason or another, a story is
missing.”vi For visual artists like Vanghoua Anthony
Vue, who work with research, history and facts, and who
deploys these to inform a willing imagination, the job 05
description is the same. Through art, histories and
memory can deliver us a closer sense of the wraiths and
ghosts from the past that walk with us in the everyday.
And when stories are passed on, from one generation to
the next, through those who have managed to survive
and bear witness, the miracle of cultural revival
and renewal burst through, leaving the cut-and-dried
synopses of historical accounts looking like so much
dust.
i
Over 270 million cluster bombs were dropped on
Laos during the Vietnam War (210 million more bombs
than were dropped on Iraq in 1991, 1998 and 2006
combined); up to 80 million did not detonate. (http://
legaciesofwar.org/about-laos/secret-war-laos/)
ii
Of the 20,000 casualties that have occurred in Los
since 1975, 23% of victims are children; 15% caused by
cluster bombs (http://www.nra.gov.la/uxoproblem.html)
Ban Napia, in Xiang Khouang province in the north-
iii
east, is known as the war spoon village.( https://
www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/mar/31/
turning-bombs-into-spoons-after-the-us-war-on-laos)
iv
Mai Na M.Lee, 2015, Dreams of the Hmong Kingdom:
the Quest for Legitimation in French Indochina, 1850-
1960, University of Wisconsin Press.
v
Artists notes to the exhibition
vi
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p055nh9y)
06
T H E F A DING
M A R KS SER IE S
Painted from film and photographic prints of
the Secret War in Laos / Laotian Civil War /
Second Indochina War (1953-75) and its subsequent
aftermath. In these paintings, thin layers of
diluted paint form the image, with certain areas
selectively sanded back between applications.
This process of creation, erasure and recreation
reflect the constant cycle of destruction and
rejuvenation which these images undergo as they
transfer between formats; from videotapes to
digitalised data, to photographic prints and
finally to their transference into paintings by
the artist’s hands.
As such, this is a metaphor for the partiality
of photographs, films, historical records and
narratives of the past, which do not reflect
absolute truths and reality, but are instead
constructions that remain open to contestation
and negotiation. Here in these paintings,
the shadows and presence of the past remain
constantly in motion as static glimpses of the
people and places that have since faded.
Untitled # 1 (Fading Marks)
2015, oil and acrylic on wood, 15 x 20cm
08 09

Untitled # 21 (Fading Marks) Left to right: Untitled # 5 / # 14 / # 38 / 26 (Fading Marks)

2015, oil and acrylic on wood, 15 x 20cm 2015, oil and acrylic on wood, 15 x 20cm
10 11

Left to right: Untitled # 41 / # 8 / # 4 / 33 (Fading Marks) Untitled # 10 (Fading Marks)

2015, oil and acrylic on wood, 15 x 20cm 2015, oil and acrylic on wood, 15 x 20cm
12 13

Onwards (Fading Marks) Dragon Capital

2016, oil and acrylic on wood, 40 x 60cm 2016, oil and acrylic on wood, 40 x 60cm (detail)
14
H ER E R ET O LD,
T H ER E U N F ADE D
A recording of the artist’s father, Chue Xeng
Vue, who experienced the Secret War in Laos /
Laotian Civil War / Second Indochina War (1953-
75) firsthand as a child soldier. Although more
than a quarter of a century has passed since Chue
Xeng and his family have arrived in Australia,
these experiences in the jungles of Laos continue
to be reflected on, retold, and reimagined.
From avoiding the aerial bombings along creek
banks, to hiding out on farmland to avoid hostile
troops, the past remains a constant presence,
projected onto the landscape of the present home
in tropical Far North Queensland.
Layering both snippets of Chue Xeng and his daily
activities with snippets of the documentary
films of the conflict, these narratives are
simultaneously a memory as well as a continued
experience. The retelling of this personal
narrative is filled with both dignity and
pride, together with sorrow and loss. It is
a past which Chue Xeng holds onto firmly, if
only to understand the futility of past actions
and violence determined by forces beyond
civilian control, along with the value of these
increasingly distant memories to providing a
sense of meaning to the present and future self.
Here Retold, There Unfaded
2017, video, 20:00 mins (film still)
16 17

Here Retold, There Unfaded Here Retold, There Unfaded

2017, video, 20:00 mins (film still) 2017, video, 20:00 mins (film still)
18
A SH EEP ’S R ED LAND / AN UNB UR NT
A L T A R FOR S P IR ITS B UR NT
In this montage, the artist combines
deteriorating VHS recordings of the family home
and activities in Far North Queensland in the
early 1990s with an unidentified documentary
film of the Laotian Civil War (1953-75). In the
background, the artist’s father sings kwv txhiaj,
a Hmong ballad, lamenting loss and separation
from a beloved homeland and family. The
documentary film’s narration is also heard, along
with the sounds of CIA contracted Air America
planes, and the low humming of the nursery rhyme
Baa, Baa, Black Sheep.
2017, joss paper, film prints, Hmong silver bars, bomb metal spoons, ceramic bowls, shelf,
rice, incense, candles, eggs, wooden horns, artificial flowers, and family photographs (detail)
By reverting between these imageries and sounds,
the artist attempts to both convey and process
the experience of being deeply exposed to his
father’s memories, and the grief and longing
transferred to the artist as a result of this.
Through countless oral stories shared during
daily activities, and hours of grainy black and
white films, the recollections and narratives of
one generation seeps into, spreads, and threatens
to overwhelm the lives and experiences of the
next, merging lived experiences and imagined
reconstructions into a mutated memory that is
both real and surreal, both distant and near, and
both vivid and dim.
An Unburnt Altar for Spirits Burnt
20 21

A Sheep’s Red Land

2016, video, 03:05 mins.Unidentified
film clips of the Laotian Civil War,
home videos and sounds from the
artist’s family in Cairns An Unburnt Altar for Spirits Burnt
1990-1995 (film stills) 2017, joss paper, film prints, Hmong silver bars, bomb metal spoons, ceramic bowls, shelf,
rice, incense, candles, eggs, wooden horns, artificial flowers, and family photographs (details)
22
C H A N D EL IER FOR A G R E AT
P L A C E T O HAVE A W AR
Referencing Joshua Kurlantzick’s recent book, A
Great Place to Have War (2017), titled after an
old C.I.A.’s sardonic remark, this installation
includes prints of documentary films stills
that have been cut-out and arranged into a
structure to resemble French empire chandeliers.
Individually, these cut-outs are made akin to
that of Hmong ntshuas ntawv, which are paper
cut-outs used as spirit money in Hmong religious
activities and burnt to provide wealth to
spirits in their afterlives. Although they may
resemble ntshuas ntawv, these paper cut-outs have
been altered to replicate the forms of cluster
munitions, with both the canister and bomblet
conjoined in a continuous flow downwards. Despite
chandeliers being historically associated with
and symbolic of wealth, luxury and grandeur in
Europe, this chandelier imitation does not share
this trait. It is instead a mass of shadows
falling from above, raining down something more
sinister and malevolent, with the shimmer of
light emanating towards the replicas of two
documents, the Geneva Accords (1954) and the
Declaration on the Neutrality of Laos (1962).
2017, film prints, replica documents, wire, bud lights, wood,
The former produced as a result of the Geneva
Conference (April 26 – July 21, 1954) between
several nations to the possibilities of restoring
peace in Indochina, and the latter an agreement
signed in Geneva by 14 states pledging respect
to Laotian neutrality, and to refrain from any
interference, whether directly or indirectly
in the internal affairs of Laos and to refrain
from drawing Laos into military alliance or to
establish military bases in Laotian territory.
Ultimately, both documents were violated by the
parties involved. With cut-outs of Laos made
into these documents, this arrangement of paper
resembles the many bomb craters that scatter
across the country that leave deep scars across
the landscape. Likewise, the ultimate worth of
these documents is scarred by the shape of that
legacy, leaving irreversible damages on a land
considered ‘a great place to have a war’.
Chandelier for a Great Place to Have a War
cable ties and French Indochina coins (detail)
24 25

Chandelier for a Great Place to Have a War

2017, film prints, replica documents, wires, bud lights, wood, cable ties and French Indochina coins (details)
26
u s a i d u s care,
u s c a r e u s ai d
For the artist, one of the more compelling and
enduring images from documentary films about the
conflict in Laos is the loading and dropping of
supplies over the countryside. In these films,
large numbers of hessian bags are strapped down
onto pallets, loaded onto Air America C-46 cargo
planes, flown above the mountainous terrain
of Laos, and subsequently pushed out the door.
Unstrapping and dispersing in midair before
landing on hill and mountainsides near villages,
these bags were filled with rice, salt, and at
other times, military supplies.
2017, acrylic, joss paper, film prints, family photographs, hessian bags, rice, and bomb metal spoons (detail).
During the height of the conflict in Laos and
Vietnam, with the threat of Communism and the
domino theory in full force, the US funneled
millions of dollars of ‘aid’ and ‘care’ into
supporting pro-Western forces in ‘neutral’ Laos.
Referring to the stencils blazoned across these
bags, the bags in this installation is repeatedly
stenciled with the letters U.S.A.I.D and
U.S.C.A.R.E, as well as the registration numbers
of several cargo planes deployed by Air America.
Opened and laying on top its own contents, these
bags deliver both the wealth and ramifications of
a war made possible by exploiting hope, desire,
fear, and false pretenses, consequently resulting
in cries of broken promises, vicitimisation, and
the shrouding of wrongdoing.
u said u scare, us care us aid
28 29

u said u scare, us care us aid

2017, acrylic, joss paper, film prints, family photographs, hessian bags, rice, and bomb metal spoons (details).
30
A M O N U M EN T FOR THE DE LIVE R E D
G O O D S OF W AR AND S UR VIVAL

During the Secret War in Laos / Laotian Civil
War / Second Indochina War (1953-75) pallets
fell from the back of cargo planes, carrying
with them objects of both life and death. Rice
bags, medical supplies and other goods dropped
from the skies, along with weaponry, cars, and
other military supplies. The capacity of these
pallets to be used to either sustain or to take
away life makes them a powerful metaphor for
the consequences of such wars. The artist’s
father’s memories of war are stenciled onto these
pallets; they trace not only memories of pain and
trauma, but also of meaning and worthiness. Rice,
including nplej ntshav (blood rice) harvested
from the artist’s parent’s farm in Far North
Queensland surround the feet of the pallet stack,
providing a bedding from which new life may
sprout.
The spoons included are those made by villagers
in Laos, who use savage metal scraps from the
bombs that remain scattered across the landscape
of the country. Melted down, these scraps are
turned into cutlery, jewelry, and other items
that are sold as souvenirs to foreign tourists.
Produced and delivered by the U.S., some of these
bomb metals are ultimately repatriated, albeit in
different forms and with different purposes. They
return as small tokens of the Laotian people’s
will to survive, tiny souvenirs that provide a
small financial income for Laotian civilians who
to this day continue to feel, to deal with, and
to carry with them the effects of war.

A Monument for the Delivered Goods of War and Survival

2017, photographic print, pallets, acrylic paint, FNQ rice, and bomb metal spoons
32 33

A Monument for the Delivered Goods of War and Survival

2017, certificate replica, pallets, acrylic paint, FNQ rice, and bomb metal spoons (details)
34
UNLIVE D, LIVE D W AR ME MOR I ES
C OALE S C E TO S HAP E IDE NTITI ES
Less than a month after I was born in Loei Province,
Thailand, I experienced the Secret War in Laos that
ended 12 years earlier. Dad and three other former Hmong
guerrilla soldiers crossed the Mekong River into Laos
to free a group of 80 Hmong people detained under the
communist government.
One night during the 10-day trek under thick canopies
and in mountainous terrains with no roads or footpaths,
the group wandered into an area that dad described
as “no man’s land”. All feared the futility of the
situation. His three comrades began shaking, tears
strewn across their faces. “So I held back my tears for
them,” dad said. They all didn’t sleep that night. “We
prayed to our ancestors during the whole night to stay
alive. I thought my only son at the time wouldn’t have a
father anymore.”
They, however, hung in there and the mission succeeded
after a long and arduous journey. That is the short
version of one of many oral stories dad told and retold.
I was born after four girls and I’ve been told that it
was common for Hmong men during that time and place to
consider a second wife if the first doesn’t produce a
son in the early stages. Dad jokes that I saved their
marriage; mum jokes that my entrance into the world
To by To u Vu e, Ju l y 2 0 1 7
stopped him from summoning his courtship skills.
Of course, mum and dad in particular have plenty of
other war stories in their treasure chests. There’s
one about dad’s scar next to his right eye—apparently
a bullet fired by the opposing forces just missed and
scraped his skin during his time as a soldier during
the Secret War. It’s a scar he bears with proudness
and sadness, nostalgia and apathy, and remembrance and
forgetfulness.
It was their stories of a bygone time and world—about
pre-war, wartime, and postwar—that kept my Hmong fabric
cored in me while a more dominant and more prevalent
worldview loomed during my formative years.
As I entered teenage years and then adulthood, the
stories they regularly recounted at the dinner table
and during long drives became fewer and fewer, and less
prolonged.
Life had been dictated by the inertia of the more
pervasive cultural forces and paradigms in which I grew
up in. I had inadvertently reserved limited space for
engaging with and processing such stories that serve as
identity and cultural memories.
My predicament and sentiments are, I’m sure, shared by
my siblings, relatives, Hmong peers and all those who
were, have been, and will be displaced because of war,
persecution and other atrocities.
From the Secret War, Laos is one of the most heavily
bombed nations in history. To this day, unexploded
ordnance (UXO) remains a risk for citizens. The UXO
extends beyond being physical remnants to being imbued
with Laos’ developments where, for example, wartime
scrap metals are turned into utensils to generate
revenue.i Beyond the geographical boundaries of Laos,
the effects of the war have also travelled and been
carried by those resettled in other parts of the
world. Intergenerational cohesion of our identities,
individually and collectively, is one of the great
intangible casualties.
35
Remanants of the
Secret War in Laos,
Phonsavan.
Photo: the artist.
While my parents prefer to interact mostly with other
Hmong folks at community gatherings, my siblings and I
opt mostly for the broader society.
They, like other first-generation parents, hold onto
cultural practices and values, like prioritising kwvtij
(relatives of the same clan) over neejtsa (those of
other clans), from a far-flung land, I’m imbued with the
dominant cultural sphere, unintentionally discarding the
one instilled during childhood that appeared to have
little utility in a mainstream society.
By anchoring in memories and narratives of the past,
it’s a way for my parents to control their identities.
Loss and separation from their beloved homeland meant
they’ve had to adapt to norms and practices that
disrupted their original self-concepts.
 For me and perhaps other second-generation children, the
36 reverse may be true—that is, adhering to memories and a
past that are inorganic to us and abiding by cultural
traditions that we deem no longer useful creates
insecurity with the identity we’ve established from more
prominent influences.
Yet, what is also true for me, now, is that both are
not mutually exclusive; they are not the antithesis of
each other. In binding the Secret War with present and
future identities, it may be less about wallowing in
the atrocities and plight we’ve suffered and more about
being empowered by those historical retellings so that
intergenerational differences may converge.
Poet and writer Mai Der Vang, in May 2015, captured
it well when she reminded the world about about a
little-known group of guerilla fighters, the inevitable
desolation of Long Tien, and the aftermath of the CIA’s
proxy war.
“As we look forward, beyond the loss of our homeland,
we must build a fortress of Hmong identity that can
withstand the effects of exile and diaspora; one
that won’t mourn what could have been, but instead,
transforms the trauma into what we can fully be,” she
writes.ii
We must use the tremors of war as foundations for
growth. Where that can be directed from can be art.
While art does not prioritise the instigation of finding
problems and solutions, it awakens us from our inertia
in the world so we can become aware and begin conversing
to derive sense.
Fading Marks by my brother Vanghoua serves as an
accessible bridge between generations for continual 37
dialogues about forging and reforging more holistic,
deeper individual and collective identities based on
mutuality, reciprocity, and equality of sometimes
conflicting and confusing influences.
Just as the Fading Marks series avoids concreteness and
opts for constructions that are open for contestations,
so are identities and cultures. Just as the
constructions are created from the meshing of various
materials and methods, so are identities and cultures.
Just as memories and experiences are ‘reflected on,
retold, and reimagined’, so should identities and
cultures for they are malleable and ever-changing.
i
(http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/08/laos/
allman-text)
ii
(https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/opinion/heirs-
of-the-secret-war-in-laos.html)
The author’s siblings and parents.
Pre-immigration photo in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, 1987.
 Artist CV
38 www.vanghoua-anthonyvue.com
Born Sydney.
Based in Brisbane, Australia.
Study
2015-2018 PhD Candidate, QCA
Griffith University, Brisbane.
2014 Bachelor of Fine Art Honours
(First Class), QCA Griffith
University, Brisbane.
Selected Grants/ Awards/ Residencies
​017 Artist in Residence, Minnesota
2 Nishikicho Studio, Tokyo.
Museum of American Art, Saint Paul,
USA (March / September).
​016 Artist in Residence, AIR
2
3331, Nishikicho Studio, Tokyo
(September).
​016 Recipient of Regional Arts
2
Development Fund (RADF) Logan City.
​015 Griffith University
2
Postgraduate Research Scholarship.
​014 NAVA Travel Grant for Future
2 Cairns.
Forward, Sydney.
2014 Finalist, The GAS: Graduate Art
Show + Survey co. Art Prize, GUAG,
Brisbane.
Solo Exhibitions
2017 Fading Marks, Logan Art
Gallery, Logan.
2016 Ci-Lines, Canberra Contemporary
Art Space, Canberra.
2016 Paj Khoom, KickArts
Contemporary Arts, Cairns.
​ 015 Hmong Crafts: Remixed Entities,
2 Selected Collaborations,
Artisan, Brisbane.
2014 DIY: Moving Objects of a Hmong
Tradition, A-CH Gallery, Brisbane.
Selected Group Exhibitions
​ 017 NEO - Emerging Artists,
2 William Jolly Bridge, Brisbane
KickArts Contemporary Arts, Cairns.
​2017 Erehwon, POP Gallery, Brisbane.
​ 016 Drawing Water, AIR 3331
2
2016 Souvenirs From Elsewhere,
Woolloongabba Art Gallery, Brisbane.
​ 016 23 Degrees, Woolloongabba Art
2 Festival, Eagle Lane. Curated and
Gallery, Brisbane.
2016 Qhia Dab Neeg Film Festival:
Photo Exhibit, Metropolitan State
University, St. Paul.
2016 Dis-order, Jugglers Art Space,
Brisbane.
2014 The GAS: Graduate Art Show +
Survey co. Art Prize, QCA Griffith
University, Brisbane.
2014 Showcase, QCA Griffith
University, Brisbane.
2014 Event Horizon, Woolloongabba
Art Gallery, Brisbane.
2014 Middle Ground 2, The Hold Art
Space, Brisbane.
2014 Gather.AWARD, St Ita’s,
Brisbane.
Fading Marks
26 July - 2 September 2017
Public & Community Projects Opening night 28 July 2017
​ 017 Beyond an Oasis, Brisbane
2
Canvas (Vibrant Laneways), Logan Art Gallery
Sunnybank, Brisbane. Wembley Rd & Jacaranda Avenue, Logan Central QLD 4114
​ 017 Untitled, Projection onto the
2
Artist’s Acknowledgements:
River. Thank you to Logan Art Gallery and Logan City Council.
Thank you to Pat Hoffie for catalogue essay and continued
​ 016 Drawing Water, Brisbane City
2
Council Vibrant Laneways (Eagle artistic support. Thank you to Toby Tou Vue for the
Lane). catalogue essay. Thank you to my good friend Saimon Her
for acquiring and sending to me bomb metal spoons from
2016 Pa Kor Day, Logan.
Laos. Thank you to the the makers of these spoons.
2016 Weaving Our Heritage, BrisAsia
And lastly, special thanks to my father Chue Xeng Vue
produced by Engage Arts.
for continuing to share your memories.
2015 Paj Qhov Rais (Ob Txhiab
Ib—2001), Drawing International Published 2017 by Vanghoua Anthony Vue Publishing
Symposium, South Bank. Design and photography by Vanghoua Anthony Vue
2015 14,600, Cairns Festival, Cairns
Botanic Gardens Visitor Center, Printed by Liveworm Studio, South Brisbane, QLD 4101
ISBN 978-0-6481330-0-1
2015 Paj Hoob # 2, Gallery Ten,
Tasmanian International Arts
All rights reserved.
Festival - Hobart. Working with
Hmong Hobart young people.
00