Lêna Bùi

Home (good infinity, bad infinity)

Home (good infinity, bad infinity) by Lêna Bùi sheds light on the experiences of those who live along, and on, the waterways of Saigon, Vietnam and Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. Vietnam is a tropical country of major sand extraction; the UAE a desert country of major land reclamation. Scenes of the Saigon river being heavily eroded due to industrial machines mining sand for construction of skyscrapers are interspersed with images of concrete jungles, and aerial views of Saigon and Sharjah varying in scale and style. Waterways here are material resources but also conduits of trade, as boats of all-purpose move and dock within each city’s ports. Humans live within these industrializing landscapes, in one context seemingly squeezed out of the bounds of a city whose ‘progress’ has designed space assuming ‘one size fits all’; and in the other, generationally at odds with a youth whose attitudes towards cosmopolitan cities struggles with the desire of its elders to enliven cultural traditions. This work continues the artist’s investigation of the geopolitics of water in differing cultural contexts, revealing the everyday impact of globalizing processes of extraction and its environmental and social ramifications.