Echoes of the Invisible Collective

This work takes the form of an interactive installation incorporating sound and water and also serves as a social platform for gathering and exchange. Tuan Mami visited Vietnamese immigrant families across Tainan and collected plants and seeds they had brought from their homelands, allowing plants that carry memories of home to take root and grow in a new place. Through the sound installation and seating, the work invites visitors to stay, listen, and exchange with one another. The work continues the ongoing project The Vietnamese Immigrating Garden, an ongoing trans-geographic, trans-political, and interdisciplinary project. By tracing introduced plants that have moved alongside people, it connects personal stories, cultural memories, and the exchange of seeds to re-examine human migration history. Through these traces, the work seeks to uncover the often-unseen structural hierarchies embedded in politics, power, and social relations surrounding migration.