Into The Violet Belly, 2022, 20 minutes

Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi’s film ‘Into The Violet Belly’ is a striking work blending family lore, mythology, science fiction and digital abstraction. The film captures the experimental collaboration between the artist and her mother, Thuyen Hoa, who survived a perilous sea journey while fleeing Vietnam after the end of the American War. The film oscillates seamlessly between multiple voices, visual registers, and timescales—was it seven months or seven thousand years?— creating an image of multitudes: migrating bodies swimming in an infinite blue, depicted as both a massive digital swarm and tiny avatars.