Artist Talk and Reception: Wednesday, April 24 at 6:00 pm

Titled after a popular Vietnamese song, Một Cõi Đi Về (translation: “spending one’s life trying to find one’s way home”) is an archival work consisting of 1,500 vernacular photographs culled from secondhand stores in Vietnam. Stitched together and measuring 14 x 20 feet, Lê’s large-scale installation shines a light on both mid-20th century Vietnamese cultural history and the diaspora that followed the Vietnam-American War.

Support provided by Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund. Special thanks to Moira Roth; Maryellen Herringer; Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam of The Poor Farm in Little Wolf, Wisconsin; Viet Lê of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artist Network; and Shoshana Wayne Gallery.

Gallery Hours: Wed—Sat, Noon to 5:00 pm (also by appointment)

Known primarily as a filmmaker, New York-based Jem Cohen has been quietly photographing around the world since the 1980s. His photographic excursions can serve as location scouts and often inform his approach to filmmaking. However, as with other multimedia artists, one could consider his work in both mediums as part of a larger whole. Says Cohen: “Though linked, they are very different ways of divining and distilling the world. The stills have been a private but crucial part of my working life.” In 2010 he began working in Austria on his latest film Museum Hours. The photographs in this exhibition represent Cohen’s time at the Kunsthistorisches Art Museum in Vienna.