Kwinnie Lê

This chapter navigates the entanglement of the Vietnamese creation myth and the skin marking (“tattoo”) tradition as an ancestral marker of identity: markings through which one can be recognised by their ancestors. Drawing on this belief system, it proposes the revival of the tradition as a way to overcome reductive narratives surrounding the Vietnamese identity, often confined to narratives of war and trauma. It reconciles the tradition as both a witness to history and a source of origin, one guided not by fundamentalism, borders or a legacy of loss, but one guided by ancestral love. An origin myth for a people half here, half there. And the rebirth of the tradition. While most chapters in “the land of the tattooed” evolve into complete textile installations, this series consisting of fourteen pieces in total, is presented like our diaspora; dispersed and scattered into pieces. May they one day find a reunion.