Borrowing methods of museum and library display, this project disrupts the conventional understanding of Vietnam War history, and negotiates the discrepancy between actual experiences and their representations.

Through recorded conversations, emails and faxes, family members recalled their memories of the 1968 Tet Offensive and the family divan–a common multi-use wooden table in Vietnam. Contradictions surfacing from their personal recollections mirror the contradictions existing within institutionalized historical accounts. Prompting viewers to further reconsider the narration of histories, I reconstructed multiple versions of the divans according to the divergent information I received.

material: tables, chairs, display shelf/wall, three reading lamps, three CD players, three headsets, speakers, fifty photocopied booklets, three maps of Vietnam screen printed on walls, five ‘divan’ study models, faxed drawings, email correspondence, and blacklight light bulbs.