Amelia Winata
“Phuong Ngo: Inheritance”

The concept for Inheritance is centred on a series of elements from Phuong Ngo’s family homes in Vietnam and Tarntanya/Adelaide. Principle amongst these are two Indochine coins, a performance based upon childhood punishments, a melamine table, jade earrings, and a collection of tables made from the timber of a familial home. Through a process of deconstruction and reformation, Ngo pieces together ancestral narratives, and considers the echoes through himself and his family.

The central objects in Inheritance, the tables, represent several generations of Ngo’s family. Following the 1975 Fall of Saigon, Ngo’s family’s wealth was redistributed by the state. To get by, the family sold contents from these homes, including three marble top tables: a square one, a round one and an oval one. Ngo has recreated these tables from timber salvaged from the family’s home in Vietnam that was demolished in 2016. Built in 1925, the structure housed many generations of Ngo’s family. One of the original tables was acquired by Ngo’s father’s family prior to his parent’s meeting, and it is displayed here alongside these reproductions. It is the only original item from these homes we know that still exists.

Against the gallery windows are mosquito nets dyed with pigment made from wood of the ancestral home. In a performance that takes place behind the curtains, Ngo kneels facing the wall. Through discussion with several first generation Vietnamese Australians, Ngo has discovered the myriad ways children of migrants were punished. In addition to the kneeling that was standard in Ngo’s household, other children kneltonrice, stood on tables with arms outstretched or were subject to caning. Though shocking to those outside of Vietnamese communities, Ngo relates to these punishments with affection, as a way of connecting with his ancestors.

Bringing family heirlooms into the present day are four videos displayed on Ngo’s wooden tables. In 1996, during his first visit to Vietnam, Ngo found a set of Indochine coins that belonged to his maternal grandmother. We see Ngo’s mother use the coins to perform cạo gió (Mandarin: guā shā /刮痧) on his back. In another video, Ngo stages a divination with the same coins. A fourth video shows Ngo’s mother inserting his paternal grandmother’s jade earrings into his ear piercings. This symbolic act of embodying both his mother and father’s legacy also represents the way in which Ngo’s exhibition weaves together embodied and material inheritance.

Some large leafy palms in foregrounding an old heritage manner. potentially the front of the house, it has 3 rounded gate ways and is one story. The colour of the building is murky and worn.
Phuong Ngo, 1996, Vietnam, courtesy the artist.

Phuong Ngo: Inheritance premieres at West Space 12 April → 7 June 2025. Curated by Amelia Winata, and supported by Creative Australia's VACS Major Projects Commission.

Amelia Winata is a writer and curator in Naarm/Melbourne. With a PhD in Art History from the University of Melbourne, Winata is a founding editor of Memo, and most recently, Curator at Gertrude.