Huỳnh Thủy Châu: 2015

Wisdom of Time, paper collage on canvas, 87” x 60”, 2015

Bomb 52 Project: Defoliation ( Or White Christmas), paper collage on canvas, 60” x 32”, 2015

By April of 1975, the United States had pulled most of its troops out of South Vietnam as the North Vietnamese were closing in on Saigon. White Christmas was a song used as evacuational signal for American personnel and civilians to quietly move to assembly areas where a helicopter will pick them up. In preparation for the evacuation, the American Embassy had distributed a 15-page booklet called SAFE, short for "Standard Instruction and Advice to Civilians in an Emergency." There was an insert page which read: "Note evacuational signal. Do not disclose to other personnel. When the evacuation is ordered, the code will be read out on Armed Forces Radio. The code is: The temperature in Saigon is 105 degrees and rising. This will be followed by the playing of I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas.” (Wikipedia)

Bomb 52 Project: Ha Noi, Dec 1972, paper collage on canvas, 72” x 60”, 2015

Pink Ville, paper collage on canvas, 60” x 62”, 2015

Pinkville, according to Wikipedia, are the U.S military’s code word for the alleged Viet Cong stronghold village called Sơn Mỹ ( including My Lai and My Khe) in Quảng Ngãi Province. Pink Ville’s ( or Mỹ Lai) massacre which was later called "the most shocking episode of the Vietnam War”. On March 16, 1968, there was the mass killing of between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians in Pinkville . It was committed by U.S. Army soldiers from the Company C of the 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade of the 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division. Victims included men, women, children, and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated( Wikipedia)

Pinko, paper collage, 36” x34”, 2015

Pinko is a slang term coined in 1925 in the United States to describe a person regarded as being sympathetic to communism, though not necessarily a Communist Party member. It has since come to be used, derogatorily, to describe anyone perceived to have leftist or socialist sympathies.( Wikipedia)

Bomb 52 Project: Agent Orange (I), paper collage on canvas, 72” x 60”, 2015

Bomb 52 Project: Agent Orange (II), paper collage on canvas, 72” x 60”, 2015

Agent Orange—or Herbicide Orange (HO)—is one of the herbicides and defoliants used by the U.S. military as part of its herbicidal warfare program during the Vietnam War. Between 1962 and 1971, the United States military sprayed nearly 20,000,000 U.S. gallons (75,700,000 L) of chemical herbicides and defoliants in Vietnam, eastern Laos and parts of Cambodia, as part of the aerial defoliation program known as Operation Ranch Hand.

The goal was to defoliate rural/forested land, depriving guerrillas of food and cover and clearing sensitive areas such as around base perimeters. The program was also a part of a general policy of forced draft urbanization, which aimed to destroy the ability of peasants to support themselves in the countryside, forcing them to flee to the U.S. dominated cities, depriving the guerrillas of their rural support base. ( Wikipedia)

Bomb 52 Project: Infiltration (I), paper collage, 74” x 51”, 2014

“From 1965 through 1973, the United State dropped at minimum over 8 million tons of munitions from aircraft onto South East Asia. The air all over South East Asia was thus the largest air war in world history. The United States did not use atomic weapons, but eight million tons is the equivalent in explosive force to 640 atomic bombs of the size used at Hiroshima."

William Gibson. The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam,1986