Nguyen Trinh Thi is a moving image pioneer, not only within the landscape of contemporary art in Vietnam, but also broader South East Asia. Her training in journalism, photography and ethnographic studies anchors her artistic commitment to the essay film, a signature method of narrative that she explores in her investigation of perception, often re-working found footage into alternate historical tales of memory. Nguyen’s practice – embracing film, photography, installation and performance – engages various intelligences in its research: from indigenous farmer to shaman, from urbanite to rural farmer, from war archivist to sound specialist. Such interdisciplinary involvement reflects her keen social interest in the function of memory, particularly the presence of absence. In her investigation of: labor and its gendering; the archive and what it does not interpret; perception and the privileging of sight – Nguyen crafts specific tales of contest, her work reflecting a complex web of social relations that begs assumptions of value re-configured.