Sutures

Suriya Khuth
Catalogue for the exhibition “Sutures”, Minnesota Museum of American Art
2021 (EN)

“In Long Distance Call, Prune Phi grapples with familial silence and fragmented answers in order to piece together her family's history. After a phone call with a distant uncle in 2017, Prune decided to visit her family in San Jose, California. When she arrived and posed questions to help her better understand her family's displacement in the aftermath of the Vietnam or American War, Phi was met with silence. Resorting to magazine clippings found on the streets of Little Saigon, documentary stills, and family portraits, Phi rips and tapes together pieces

of a puzzle even though none of the pieces seem to fit. The negative spaces within Phi's photo-collages begin to form a question: what visual, oral, written histories do we inherit, and what memories are ultimately left to fade into oblivion? Phi's Long Distance Call asks us to listen a little longer, for we might begin to hear who is on the other line-the hum of the dial tone, the clink of plates at a crowded dinner table, or waves crashing to the sides of a boat searching for a new home.”