New Battambang Market

In 2008, artist Dana Heng’s parents closed their business, New Battambang Market, a Southeast Asian grocery store in South Providence. In this exhibition, Heng and artist Moy Chuong restage vignettes of New Battambang Market within the Providence Public Library. Identifying loss and memory as generative sites for making, Chuong and Heng, working in ceramic sculpture, screen printing, and installation, recreate familiar and mundane objects, from corporate calendars once found in the market to vibrantly colored plastic stools. This exhibition prompts viewers to wonder how everyday things might evoke structures of feeling related to Southeast Asian (dis)identity, immigration, and diaspora.

This project was funded in part by the Interlace Grant Fund.