As a young child, Chung experienced the 1978 historic flood in a New Economic Zone in the Mekong Delta of Việt Nam, where she and her family were forcibly relocated after the war. Chung has become interested in flooding as something natural and as indicative of Anthropocene disasters–particularly floods which have been intensified by hydropower development in the Mekong and with sea-level rise due to extreme climate impact. Discussing the resettlement of Vietnamese people in the Mekong Delta due to climate change, the United Nations Development Program confirms in 2014 that “the vast majority of displacement is triggered by climate and weather-related hazards”[1] but it hardly addresses the root cause of such disaster, in which dam construction is a major factor.[2] Dams alter the flow of water and with sudden fluctuations in water levels disrupt fish migration and spawning. Constricting water flows also means trapping the nutrient-rich sediment needed to fertilize rice paddies, to feed the fish and to replenish rich alluvial soil in preventing deltas from sinking and from saltwater intrusion. Reservoirs cannot replace the natural habitats essential to many of the more than 500 aquatic species native to the Mekong River. The hydropower projects in the upper and middle reaches of the Mekong continue to leave immeasurable negative impacts on the ecosystems in the Lower Mekong Basin, the lifeblood for almost 65 million people.

Chung’s cartographic drawings in The River Project render with gossamer precision and exquisite detail historic as well as projected patterns of flooding in Sài Gòn (HCMC) and the southern provinces of Việt Nam by 2050, based on a study published by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 2010.[3] On the contrary, her mixed media map up and down the river-migration of the fish poetically depicts Chung’s childhood memory of the 1978 Mekong flood, with leaping silver-colored fish she recalls seeing. The 2,800 mile waterway originated in the Tibetan plateau flows through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and empties itself into the East Sea (or Biển Đông–the Vietnamese name of South China Sea) off Việt Nam through nine tributaries under the local name sông Cửu Long. The Mekong River is central for the region’s economy as it sustains the world’s second largest inland fishery. Every year during the monsoon season, the Mekong summer floods increase the river’s flow enormously and as it comes rushing down, its main channel can’t contain this raging water; The river flows back upstream into the Tonle Sap Lake, expanding and temporarily turning it into one of the world’s largest rivers, given the poetic name the river that runs backward. During this time, billions of little fish grow fat in the submerged forest around the Tonle Sap and become the mainstay of the Mekong fishery.

[1] United Nations Development Program, “Migration, Resettlement and Climate Change in Viet Nam Reducing exposure and vulnerabilities to climatic extremes and stresses through spontaneous and guided migration” (Ha Noi: United Nations, 2014), 18.
https://environmentalmigration.iom.int/migration-resettlement-and-climate-change-viet-nam-reducing-exposure-and-vulnerabilities-climatic
[2] Amin-Hong, Heidi, “Militarized Sustainability: Feminist Refugee Memory and Hydropower in the Mekong Delta,” in Verge: Studies in Global Asias, volume 7, issue 1 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021), 121.
[3] Asian Development Bank, “Ho Chi Minh City Adaptation to Climate Change” (Manila: Asian Development Bank, 2010), 6-8.
https://icem.com.au/portfolio-items/ho-chi-minh-city-adaptation-to-climate-change-summary-report/

Related Exhibitions:
Art and the Global Climate Struggle | Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca | 2021
Six Lines of Flight | San Francisco MoMA | 2012
The Map as Art | Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO | 2012
OPEN HOUSE: Singapore Biennale | 2011
The River Project | Campbelltown Art Centre, Sydney | 2010

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