Alvin Luong 梁超洪

A Voluminous Crush is made to appear as if a real estate development billboard has been soiled by a rising flood. My family home in the southern outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City is depicted with a green voluminous tide encroaching on the home. Within this green tide are hundreds of drawings of the Southeast Asian vegetable rau muống, also known as river spinach. 

The artwork extends my investigation into river spinach, which is the object of inquiry in Ration Market, and was once rationed to my family in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. The river spinach now grows wildly on the marsh land that my family’s home is located on. With the artwork I speculate that river spinach will thrive as the land around my family’s home continues to flood in greater severity making the conditions favorable for the growth of the plant. The water is depicted in green to reflect the algae rich water that surrounds my family home.  The artwork intimately captures Vietnam’s historical crisis from the Vietnam War, the country’s contemporary liberalized market economy, and Vietnam's future crisis from Climate Change.