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FRAGILITY
BRINGS AWARENESS
FOR BETTER
FUTURES

Anida Yoeu Ali

Audio Transcript

Curatore voice with LIM Wei-Ling
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Imagine a life, where as a young child, you are packed up one day, and forced to flee the only home you know. Your place of birth. There is fear, confusion and pandemonium around you. Your life and that of your family’s, is uncertain, and you have become stateless, without shelter, without security. Growing up in a foreign land, you can only envisage what your birthland is. When you finally return one day, how do you see yourself, against the backdrop of what might have been? How would you reconcile the differences? For Anida Yoeu Ali, the ‘Buddhist Bug’ acts as an incarnation of her being-with her head in one place, and her feet 1000 miles away in another land.

Sense of Loss

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Displacement of People

Longing for Homeland

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Reconciling One’s Identity

Between
Two Cultures

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"Imagine a life, where as a young child, you are packed up one day, and forced to flee the only home you know. Your place of birth. There is fear, confusion and pandemonium around you. Your life and that of your family’s, is uncertain, and you have become stateless, without shelter, without security.Growing up in a foreign land, you can only envisage what your birthland is. When you finally return one day, how do you see yourself, against the backdrop of what might have been? How would you reconcile the differences?

For Anida Yoeu Ali, the ‘Buddhist Bug’ acts as an incarnation of her being-with her head in one place, and her feet a 1000 miles away in another land."

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Buddhist Bug
Video, 2014

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Artist Statement: Anida Yoeu Ali
Video

Audio Narration

A Note from the Curator

by LIM Wei-Ling

Anida Yoeu Ali, an American, Khmer, Cham, Malaysian artist, fled Cambodia with her family at the age of five to escape the Khmer Rouge. Her interdisciplinary work probes the issues of displacement and belonging. Intersecting performance art, exhibition, and audience engagement, the series comes from the artist’s personal spiritual and cultural turmoil.Created from a sense of play, The Buddhist Bug series utilizes a unique combination of humor and otherness. The series serves as a continuous exploration of Ali’s diasporic identities, as she was raised in the US, where she currently resides.

The artist commented that “The Bug is created as an assertion of paradoxes,” in that the Bug longs for stillness while on a constant journey in search for home. The Bug is both a bridge and an obstacle; the linear body becomes a connector between different cultures, religions and identities – yet it also refers to the artist’s longing and own attempts at reconnecting with her Khmer roots.

What are you feeling?

sad feelings happy feelings apprehension feelings contempt feelings