Department of 2nd Home Affairs
THANG DO X AZIZ SOHAIL Curator
West Space Melbourne
Commissioned as part of To Forever Ebb and Flow: Queer Time/Migrant Time, the installation features 20 common Australian visa subclasses embossed on gold metal leaf and arranged in an ancestral altar installation. Australia has many visa codes, which the Home Affairs Minister in April 2023 described as "so complicated that if I drew you a diagram it would look like a tangled bowl of spaghetti".
Thang takes advantage of the Window’s form to reference a Vietnamese ancestral altar. Each element is embossed with a different visa code, representing the complicated processes new immigrants to this continent must navigate and live their lives within. Despite migrants often being unfairly generalised and perceived as a disruptive force endangering this land, this work is a reminder of a historical truth: that the large majority of Australia’s population is composed of settlers and migrants from the first colonial encounter.
Curated by Aziz Sohail, To Forever Ebb and Flow: Queer/Migrant Time is an evolutive exhibition across Monash University's MADA Gallery, and the West Space Window, bringing together international artists and artists in Australia. The project takes its departure point the distinct propositions of migrant time and queer time, and brings them into conversation.
Thang Do
Department of 2nd Home Affairs, 2024, gold metal leaf, emboss on scored and bent cards, 1890mmH x 750mmW x 150mmD.
Special Thanks
Aziz Sohail, Sebastian Henry-Jones, Joanna Kitto, Benjamin Baker, Mandeep Singh