INSTALLATION VIEWS
The Lexicon of Freedom, 2024.
One-channel video (color; sound, 50 minutes) on CRT monitor on cart, classroom chair desk, collage and mixed media on English language guides on shelf, 9 feet x 12 feet wooden platform, accessibility ramp.
Installation views and details, Freedom of Expression, John Hartell Gallery, Ithaca, NY, March 4 – 29, 2024.
សូមប្រកបអក្សរខ្មែរ
John Hartell Gallery (Ithaca, NY)
Organized by Tina DuBois, Cornell Council for the Arts
March 4 – March 29, 2024
(Video) (Translation Key)
(Credits)
The Lexicon of Freedom re-stages a 1986 forgotten Disney film The Girl Who Spelled Freedom (director Simon Wincer) to complicate the nationalizing practice of American spelling bees as a cultural project shaping identity and language – explored through the lens of Cambodian diasporic subjectivity. The film is a dramatization of the true life of Linn Yann, a young Cambodian refugee girl, who, along with her family, receives sponsored immigration to the United States. Linn goes on to become a spelling bee champion shortly after.
This multimedia installation comprises a one-channel video with sound, artist books, and painterly interventions on English language learning guides and workbooks that unfurl onto a recreation of a spelling bee stage. A meditative response that seeks to unsettle childhood nostalgia, reflect on early cinematic representation of Asian migration in the aftermath of the Cold War, and question notions of freedom, power, citizenship, and exceptionalism.
Text by Sopheak Sam