Anie Nheu began a discussion of her piece Flotsam and jetsam by reading it aloud. Inadvertently perhaps, identifying her work as both poetry and installation.
The large character in a box on the right reads as exit. The characters that follow speak of a watery journey and things thrown overboard along the way, presumably to be washed this way and that by the prevailing currents. As we spoke Anie’s poem became a lament for a Chinese culture that she has never known and conversely an Australian culture that to her remains elusive. Anie was born, on the road, to parents
who had already left China and who would take another 17 years to arrive in Australia where Anie assumed her nationality.
Here, decades after arriving in Australia the poise of Anie’s installation speaks of China not so much as a culture lost but as a culture imagined. This is not the story of a migrant discovering and reclaiming an abandoned culture, it is a story of cultural invention.
For more information, visit slotprojects.net
