Shadow (2021-2022)

Reina Takeuchi and Lucia Tường Vy Nguyễn alternate between their inner monologues and mother tongues in performance video work Shadow. Pulling together their physical practices – boxing and dancing – into a dialogue, the artists embody “shadow” as both an act (verb), and an object (noun). Takeuchi dances and Nguyễn shadow boxes; their bodies mirroring, brushing, and holding each other with the intimacy of a shadow tied to oneself.

The physical rituals of dancing and boxing have become ways for Takeuchi and Nguyễn to escape, meditate, and fill the gaps that are left when language does not suffice, or their fluency as diaspora falters. The ways in which the artists train their bodies evoke a voice (of breath work, clothes rustling, feet padding) by which they may fill the silences in empirical archives that have made spectres of Asian women’s bodies. By choreographing and composing voice recordings of themselves, their mothers, and objects from the archive of their friendship, Takeuchi and Nguyễn speak to what makes them whole. In Shadow the artists re-appropriate movement and memory as a corrective practice; attempting to mend the rips in their self-understanding.

Exhibited as part of RE- at SomoS Arts Berlin, curated by Nicole Beck.

Credits:

Performers/collaborators: Lucia Tường Vy Nguyễn and Reina Takeuchi

Soundscore: Jackson Garcia

Additional playing: Amy Zhang

Editor: Reina Takeuchi

Assistant editor & documentation: Tom Kentta