Even The Trees Would Leave

2005
A portfolio diptych photographic prints and embossed prints. Published in Cabinet Magazine.

A narrative of photos and text, Even the Trees Would Leave looks at the Vietnamese refugee crisis that took place in Hong Kong from 1975-2000 through the lens of the present moment. The project traces a reverse chronology from the future to the day the first Danish container ship transporting Vietnamese refugees entered the waters of Hong Kong, a port of first asylum. This embattled history, still sensitive in Hong Kong, highlights pressing issues regarding the legalities of the seas, governmental responsibility, and the plight of global migrants. Today several former refugee camps have been converted into golf driving ranges and family recreation centers. These sites of leisure and tourism remain residual embodiments of trauma.

Because of its dense population within a confined landmass, Hong Kong has a long practice of re-claiming land from the sea. The closing of Hong Kong's last Vietnamese refugee camp in 2000 was treated as another form of land reclamation--Hong Kong re-claiming its land for its own people.

Part of the project was published in Cabinet Magazine.