Steven Luu
/Steven Luu
http://www.stevenluuart.com // ig: @4art4food4travel
My artwork is a vessel for my healing. During my childhood, unlike many other kids with beautiful and happy memories, I endured hardship, poverty under Communism, and the unforgiving sea during our escape from Vietnam. Later in my adulthood, I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force as a medic and the theme of death continued traveling with me. I turned all my memories into living experiences through art. The materials I used for my "Abundance of Expressions" project are items that accompanied me while serving in the military and casual everyday objects.
My artwork is a vessel for my healing. During my childhood, unlike many other kids with beautiful and happy memories, I endured hardship, poverty under Communism, and the unforgiving sea during our escape from Vietnam. Later in the adulthood, I enlisted to the U.S. Air Force as a medic and the theme of death continued travelling with me. I turned all my memories into living experience through art. The materials I used for my "Abundance of Expressions" project are items that accompanied me while serving in the military and casual everyday objects. As an artist, I have chosen the process of transformation, reinvention, and repurposing of materials to articulate my inner voice and a way to seal painful memories as bookmarks. I began my first ‘expressions’ by tracing the profile of my own head on paper, then cutting around it to construct a ‘head-looking’ box. I placed the objects into this box and sealed them with epoxy resin to enclose them. Resin is a rigid substance; it comes as two inactive liquid compounds that need to be mixed to activate them and form a solid block. The process of encasing objects became a ritual for healing my trauma. I completed this project with 128 heads. They are stacked in a long rectangular form, so viewers can recognize and listen to each specific testimony of my life.
