Complementing the color poster series and performance documentation, this second installment of the Long Live Tourism! Cigarette Campaign consists of six black & white photos, where I embody an anonymous figure holding Tourism/Du Lịch cigarettes and wearing a traditional Vietnamese nón sunhat. Shot against the stark backdrop of East German Plattenbau architecture, the somber gray atmosphere reflects both Berlin’s winter mood and the historical weight of the location – a former dormitory for Vietnamese contract workers on Rhinstrasse.
The figure moves through the confined space of the courtyard – waiting, pacing, walking away – smoking the very product they are selling. This choreography within the architectural boundaries of the Plattenbau references the precarious existence many Vietnamese faced in post-reunification Berlin. After German reunification, Vietnamese contract workers lost their legal status unless they secured independent employment. While some established legitimate businesses like food kiosks and flower shops, others turned to informal economies, including cigarette smuggling, as a means of survival.
Having moved to Berlin from the US in the mid-1990s as an Amerasian of Vietnamese descent, I had previously worked with a local nonprofit supporting the Vietnamese community at this very location. Rhinstrasse and similar dormitories became sites of economic improvisation, where residents prepared Vietnamese food in communal kitchens or discreetly sold cigarettes brought from Eastern Europe, hidden in plastic bags or bushes, ready for quick concealment if authorities appeared.
The work raises challenging questions about artistic complicity: in re-enacting traces of marginal existence, to what extent do I participate in the same dynamics of objectification and exoticization that I aim to critique? The images intentionally blur fiction with historical reality, examining the tensions between visibility and invisibility, survival and stigma, belonging and otherness.
The work raises challenging questions about artistic complicity: in re-enacting traces of marginal existence, to what extent do I participate in the same dynamics of objectification and exoticization that I aim to critique? The images intentionally blur fiction with historical reality, examining the tensions between visibility and invisibility, economic survival and stigma.
Through its stark aesthetic and layered meanings, Long Live Tourism! Cigarette Campaign – Part 2: Black & White Photos questions the legitimacy of the artist’s voice in representing marginalized histories. The work resists easy categorization, holding space for discomfort while exploring the shifting landscapes of migration and belonging – inviting reflection on the complex dynamics of looking, being seen, and seeing oneself through the gaze of others.
Images produced in collaboration with Michael Weihrauch.
Complementing the color poster series and performance documentation, this second installment of the Long Live Tourism! Cigarette Campaign consists of six black-and-white “mood photos,” where I embody an anonymous figure holding Tourism (Du Lịch) cigarettes and wearing a traditional Vietnamese nón sunhat. Shot against the stark backdrop of East German Plattenbau architecture, the somber gray atmosphere reflects both Berlin’s winter mood and the historical weight of the location – a former dormitory for Vietnamese contract workers on Rhinstrasse.
The figure moves through the confined space of the courtyard – waiting, pacing, walking away – smoking the very product they are selling. This choreography within the architectural boundaries of the Plattenbau references the precarious existence many Vietnamese faced in post-reunification Berlin. After German reunification, Vietnamese contract workers lost their legal status unless they secured independent employment. While some established legitimate businesses like food kiosks and flower shops, others turned to informal economies, including cigarette smuggling, as a means of survival.
Having moved to Berlin from the US in the mid-1990s as an Amerasian of Vietnamese descent, I had previously worked with a local nonprofit supporting the Vietnamese community at this very location. Rhinstrasse and similar dormitories became sites of economic improvisation, where residents prepared Vietnamese food in communal kitchens or discreetly sold cigarettes brought from Eastern Europe, hidden in plastic bags or bushes, ready for quick concealment if authorities appeared.
The work raises challenging questions about artistic complicity: in re-enacting traces of marginal existence, to what extent do I participate in the same dynamics of objectification and exoticization that I aim to critique? The images intentionally blur fiction with historical reality, examining the tensions between visibility and invisibility, survival and stigma, belonging and otherness.
The work raises challenging questions about artistic complicity: in re-enacting traces of marginal existence, to what extent do I participate in the same dynamics of objectification and exoticization that I aim to critique? The images intentionally blur fiction with historical reality, examining the tensions between visibility and invisibility, economic survival and stigma.
Through its stark aesthetic and layered meanings, Long Live Tourism! Cigarette Campaign – Part 2: Mood Photos questions the legitimacy of the artist’s voice in representing marginalized histories. The work resists easy categorization, holding space for discomfort while exploring the shifting landscapes of migration and belonging – inviting reflection on the complex dynamics of looking, being seen, and seeing oneself through the gaze of others.
Images produced in collaboration with Michael Weihrauch.
