Joan's Arc #2 Back view of seven standing sentry figures, variable sizes, duraclear transparency, sandwiched between two sandblasted photo images on glass, in steel standing frame.
The images in this section portray the body as a contested site in the United States as well as in Vietnam. The body is imaged as a site for healing and commemoration. As we have inflicted pain on our enemies, so have we on ourselves.
A phalanx of standing sentry figures of "western" women are juxtaposed with hanging “eastern” robes. The female sentry figures’ bodies are their battlefields (suggested by the signs and symbols sandblasted on the glass sandwiching these film portraits). The robes are comprised of montaged video stills of Vietnamese sites of war and peace (printed in sections on vellum). Thich Quan Duc, the monk who self-immolated in 1963 changing the course of the Vietnam War, is the subject of one of the robe images. His robe is juxtaposed with a contemporary young Joan in fencing garb whose earlier incarnation was also consumed by fire.
"Eleemosynary" is a video projection into a small glass bowl on a stand. Hands, in the video, circle the bowl. The hands offer scenes from the war, orphanages, temples, western doctors’ offices. The moving images in the bowl suggest that we are all eleemosynaries who are begging--to offer, to give, to receive and to exchange pain. Video stills from this work and a poetic text create a bridge from Joan’s Arc to Millennial Forest
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