Tuan Mami
Seeding the Future, 2024
Table, collected Vietnamese seeds, clay, and wall drawing with clay
Courtesy of the artist
Made in collaboration with VIET Community Resource Center
Commissioned by Prospect.6
Seeding the Future is an installation and performance work that is inspired by the migration and resilience of Vietnamese communities. In this ongoing work Tuan Mami uses plants as a metaphor for migration, acknowledging that many immigrants bring seeds from their home countries to their new residences. This multifaceted work, which includes oral histories, a conversational space, workshops, film documentaries, and a cooking party, draws upon the artist’s own migratory histories—and those of Vietnamese elders in New Orleans—to create a social platform to discuss belonging, memory, and emotion in relation to food and homeland. Working closely with the VIET (Vietnamese Initiatives in Economic Training) Community Resource Center in New Orleans, Mami produced a new video documenting story from first-generation Vietnamese New Orleanians.
During the run of this exhibition Mami invites the public to meet with elders from this community every Wednesday from 12-3pm. He encourages visitors to make seed balls with the elders and exchange stories.
Visitors can make seed balls by covering a seed with damp soil and patting it into a clay sphere. These seed balls can then be placed in bags and transported home, where the balls can be planted in a pot or garden.
This exhibition includes images from "God: Sixth day of Creation" in Holy History in 120 images, 1927; Dharma Documentaries; Hua Junwu, woodcut by Cao Cuoxing, "Bumper Harvest, The sack is labeled ‘rice.’" From JFRB, 3 November 1944 and and interview from Mark Cave, an oral historian and senior curator at the Historic New Orleans Collection.