Trang Minh Hoang
Ana Lucía Fernández
trang:
"I also read One Hundred Years of Solitude already and I really love the magic realism brought into the stories' details. How magnificent they are!
I am living this life and trying to experience it at most because I think experience is all we have in the end. They happen along the journey in these several decades of human's life. I'm stepping into in this 'game' so I grab the chance to 'play' it, to become my own character and in this character I can be any other one. I gradually realize that I or we don't have something called an 'ego' or one's nature. We are a collective of many selves contained in this one self. I am awarded this body of mine to appear on Earth and it leads to the fact that I make use of it to go through many progresses of life: to learn, to love, to get pain, to be resilient, to keep continuosly changing, to destroy the old self and become someone new in a new chapter, etc till the day I die. Of course I have a feeling of the place and the culture I belong to but when concerning heritage, it is a broad spectrum to talk about. And to be honest, I don't really think of heritage when everything will eventually perish into the nothingness in the end.
To think more 'personally', when I was a child, my grandpa and my mom used to bring me to the bookshops and buy me the books I wanted. My grandpa was a journalist so newspapers appeared everywhere in my house when eNewspaper was still a distant concept. My mom also loves reading literature. Both of them probably inspired me a lot in the way I love reading (though I don't read much) or being curious about everything around me. I can say that love, sympathy and knowledge are three heritage aspects which are truly meaningful to me even though all of things will eventually disappear in the flow of time. Impermanence."
"I also read One Hundred Years of Solitude already and I really love the magic realism brought into the stories' details. How magnificent they are!
I am living this life and trying to experience it at most because I think experience is all we have in the end. They happen along the journey in these several decades of human's life. I'm stepping into in this 'game' so I grab the chance to 'play' it, to become my own character and in this character I can be any other one. I gradually realize that I or we don't have something called an 'ego' or one's nature. We are a collective of many selves contained in this one self. I am awarded this body of mine to appear on Earth and it leads to the fact that I make use of it to go through many progresses of life: to learn, to love, to get pain, to be resilient, to keep continuosly changing, to destroy the old self and become someone new in a new chapter, etc till the day I die. Of course I have a feeling of the place and the culture I belong to but when concerning heritage, it is a broad spectrum to talk about. And to be honest, I don't really think of heritage when everything will eventually perish into the nothingness in the end.
To think more 'personally', when I was a child, my grandpa and my mom used to bring me to the bookshops and buy me the books I wanted. My grandpa was a journalist so newspapers appeared everywhere in my house when eNewspaper was still a distant concept. My mom also loves reading literature. Both of them probably inspired me a lot in the way I love reading (though I don't read much) or being curious about everything around me. I can say that love, sympathy and knowledge are three heritage aspects which are truly meaningful to me even though all of things will eventually disappear in the flow of time. Impermanence."
"It’s great to see your vivid colorful fruit photo :)
Apart from the photo we are assigned every week, there is one more this week, which is about preparing a meal. Do you remember? I have just uploaded mine, a scene where my grandma was washing a lot of types of vegetables to prepare for a Vietnamese dish called “bún chả”. We Vietnamese often eat a lot of vegetables in our meals so many foreign friends say that we have healthy food style haha."
Apart from the photo we are assigned every week, there is one more this week, which is about preparing a meal. Do you remember? I have just uploaded mine, a scene where my grandma was washing a lot of types of vegetables to prepare for a Vietnamese dish called “bún chả”. We Vietnamese often eat a lot of vegetables in our meals so many foreign friends say that we have healthy food style haha."
Ana Lucia:
"I am not somebody that reads a lot of literature. I lack the patience or the concentration you need for it, my mind usually wanders around until I realize have lost myself in my thoughts, and I am 5 pages ahead. Yet to my surprise, I discovered Gabriel García Márquez when I was 14. I studied highschool in Spain, alas Latinoamerican literature was never fully taught; That semester we had to summarize hundreds of years of writings from non European Hispanic authors. For the first time, my country saw peace: drugs and cartels were not the topic, but nobel prizes and magic realism.
My teacher made us read Neruda, Cortazar, Borges... and Cronicas de una Muerte Anunciada (Chronicle of a Death Foretold), by García Márquez. I amicably declined, as a rebel that I was, and chose to read Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude), his most confusing but known novel. My mom told me about her sister making a family tree to follow the story, so I googled one, printed it and glued it to the back. And in a week I read the 470 pages. I have just discovered world apart from reality but close to home. Not the Colombian Caribbean that I remembered, but the one I fantasized about.
I have read most of his books at this point. I feel attached to my culture and my family, it transports me back to my memories. I feel the breeze, the warm sea, the sand crumbling under my feet. The music and the joy in the streets. I go back home, to a place that does not exist anymore.
When I think about heritage, most of the times I think about how does immigration changes our perspective on it. I personally experience it as a connection to my family and childhood. I strongly believe that we are product of our experiences and memories, and culture is our way of feeling attached to that what we remember from the place/ethnicity we come from. It brings us together, and helps us to feel as if we are part of something bigger, as we are not alone in this vast universe.
García Márquez, Shakira, a good cup of coffee, a colorful orchid, mango with lime juice salt and pepper, avocados, the humid heat, my skin color and my nose, Botero, Catholism, Jorge Isaacs, Speed skating... These all has defined me, and I bring them with me everywhere I go."
"I am not somebody that reads a lot of literature. I lack the patience or the concentration you need for it, my mind usually wanders around until I realize have lost myself in my thoughts, and I am 5 pages ahead. Yet to my surprise, I discovered Gabriel García Márquez when I was 14. I studied highschool in Spain, alas Latinoamerican literature was never fully taught; That semester we had to summarize hundreds of years of writings from non European Hispanic authors. For the first time, my country saw peace: drugs and cartels were not the topic, but nobel prizes and magic realism.
My teacher made us read Neruda, Cortazar, Borges... and Cronicas de una Muerte Anunciada (Chronicle of a Death Foretold), by García Márquez. I amicably declined, as a rebel that I was, and chose to read Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude), his most confusing but known novel. My mom told me about her sister making a family tree to follow the story, so I googled one, printed it and glued it to the back. And in a week I read the 470 pages. I have just discovered world apart from reality but close to home. Not the Colombian Caribbean that I remembered, but the one I fantasized about.
I have read most of his books at this point. I feel attached to my culture and my family, it transports me back to my memories. I feel the breeze, the warm sea, the sand crumbling under my feet. The music and the joy in the streets. I go back home, to a place that does not exist anymore.
When I think about heritage, most of the times I think about how does immigration changes our perspective on it. I personally experience it as a connection to my family and childhood. I strongly believe that we are product of our experiences and memories, and culture is our way of feeling attached to that what we remember from the place/ethnicity we come from. It brings us together, and helps us to feel as if we are part of something bigger, as we are not alone in this vast universe.
García Márquez, Shakira, a good cup of coffee, a colorful orchid, mango with lime juice salt and pepper, avocados, the humid heat, my skin color and my nose, Botero, Catholism, Jorge Isaacs, Speed skating... These all has defined me, and I bring them with me everywhere I go."
"This week has been about rediscovering.
While doing research about my own heritage, I entered an internet rabbit hole. The music, the colors, the aromas and flavours made me feel deeply attached again to my own culture.
I have been searching for my cultural identity for 5 years. It is difficult to define yourself when you've been so detached from your roots as I was on my teenage years. Now, I keep finding pieces of me in Gabriel Garcia Marquez books, in the coffee i drink in the morning, the gold, silver and emeralds i wear with pride, and my music...
For this image, I soaked as much culture as I could, and got extremely moved by the colors and the sounds from my Caribbean sea, specially by Carlos Vives' rhythm (perhaps our biggest artist). I wanted to make an homage to the thing I am the most proud about: our nature. That is why i chose to make this still life, with some of the fruits that from my country and we use often in our cuisine."
While doing research about my own heritage, I entered an internet rabbit hole. The music, the colors, the aromas and flavours made me feel deeply attached again to my own culture.
I have been searching for my cultural identity for 5 years. It is difficult to define yourself when you've been so detached from your roots as I was on my teenage years. Now, I keep finding pieces of me in Gabriel Garcia Marquez books, in the coffee i drink in the morning, the gold, silver and emeralds i wear with pride, and my music...
For this image, I soaked as much culture as I could, and got extremely moved by the colors and the sounds from my Caribbean sea, specially by Carlos Vives' rhythm (perhaps our biggest artist). I wanted to make an homage to the thing I am the most proud about: our nature. That is why i chose to make this still life, with some of the fruits that from my country and we use often in our cuisine."
Trang Minh Hoang preparing food
Ana Lucía Fernández preparing food