Green Go Home (Tomas Vu & Rirkrit Tiravanija)

Hua International is pleased to present Green Go Home, a collaborative project initiated by internationally acclaimed artists Tomas Vu and Rirkrit Tiravanija which evolves in each iteration often inviting new artists to participate. Green Go Home continually modifies its mediums, manifesting differently each time that it occupies a new landscape. Conceived as a form of dynamic dialogue with the looming protests and civil unrest throughout the world today, this context-responsive undertaking brings together found images and evocative text that equally recalls the fragmented language of self-actualization found on many social media platforms and the poetic, agit-prop of historical movements like the Situationist International. In the imagery itself, revolutionaries like Angela Davis rub shoulders with pop cultural figures such as David Bowie, Tupac Shakur, and Barbarella, or artists Frida Kahlo and Ana Mendieta, and scenes from films or a found photo of a historic beauty pageant. The grid of images takes on a polyphonic relationship to Tiravanija’s written statement, thereby interweaving layers of interpretation, readings, and misunderstandings. Green Go Home is meant to be a wall of resistors, and of resistance. 

Vu and Tiravanija’s collaboration proposes a symbiotic and ever-evolving relationship to text, image, and other artworks. For the iteration that Hua International presents, Vu and Tiravanija have incorporated Rafael Domenech’s spatial works as publication, which explores how the traveling message has historically been part of revolts and dissent, as well as how ideas have the capacity to connect spaces and bridge realities. 

GREEN GO HOME is a flexible participative installation that refers to the term ‘gringo’ - an expression used in Latin America to describe a foreigner - reflecting colonial attitudes and interventions of the US towards its southern neighbours in a provocative way. The origins of the term gringo mix with myth and folklore which are sources ways of approaching the entire project. Often Green Go Home includes moving and interactive components such as silk screening t-shirts or items of clothing of viewers in a way that can mix and remix the imaginaries.