'Untitled' / Jess Tu

Navigating the fibres between memory and trauma, artist Jess Tu creates this visual and textual sketch, left untitled. Exploring the concept of negative space, Tu carefully inspects a moment within her own recollection.

Mother hadn't been back since she fled after the Vietnam War ended. When we arrive at the house there is an old man standing out the front gazing out over the street. Mother turns to look at him and says, "That's my uncle". I had no idea mother still had relatives in Vietnam. Glaciated by a fear of fleeing, he never fled. So he welcomes us into the house where he, his two children and two grandchildren live.

With so much trauma from her past, she never faced it in her future.

And her children would inherit her future. And she held so much trauma from her past and from the generations before her, that it eventually dripped down onto her children, and they could feel it.

Now face to face with her past, she doesn’t acknowledge it. She wants nothing to do with him. I still don't know this man’s name. Only known to me as uncle. He is my grandfather’s brother, he lives in Vietnam, sits on motorbikes like they’re normal chairs, spends a lot of time observing his surroundings, wears button up shirts and suit pants with sandals like a boss.