Exhibits at Hollins

Went to opening at Hollins for 3 new exhibitions last week. This piece originally in Roanoke Star-Sentinel. Check out the stained glass from Ireland. That was neat ... Binh Dahn's work is just haunting.

Haunting images at Hollins in The Eclipse of Angkor exhibit: The Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence at Hollins University this semester is Binh Dahn, who creates photographs on leaves using the chlorophyll found within. Dahn is also exhibiting some of his work in an exhibition being held on campus at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum through April 18. There is an opening reception on Thursday, February 19 from 6-8pm.

In the Eclipse of Angkor features Vietnam-inspired “chlorophyll prints” of soldiers, prisoners of war and other experiences, all reproduced on plants and leaves. Some tend to be grim, stark reminders of a prison camp in Cambodia, where pictures taken of POW’s before they died or were killed have found their way into Danh’s hands. He’s a San Francisco area resident of Vietnamese descent.

“The image is transferred using the natural properties of leaves, which is photosynthesis,” said Dahn in explaining his technique, which had been on exhibit locally several years ago at the Art Museum of Western Virginia. Dank also uses the old-fashioned Daguerreotype method for some of his prints, saying as a photography student he was “always fascinated,” by a technique that lasted just about ten years after it was introduced in 1839. “Mirrors with memory,” is how Danh refers to the first photographic method.

Danh has visited Cambodia several times while researching his work and has been to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum – formerly a high school before it became a prison camp and mass gravesite during the Vietnam War era. That when “the Khmer Rouge started exterminating the [local] population,” notes Dahn, who is also working with Hollins students as the spring semester’s artist in residence. “A lot of them were children and normal citizens.”

Bringing Dahn’s work to the Wilson Museum fits with the mission of director Amy Moorefield, hired last fall. “I think Binh’s work is a perfect example of using the museum as a laboratory, really focusing on new technologies and artists that are …pushing the field of contemporary art further along.”

A printed catalog of Danh’s work, which also features several essays, will be available after the official launch on February 19. Two other exhibits at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, one featuring Irish stained glass and the other called “Re-imagining the Distaff Tool Kit” will also be shown until April.

“We have something for everyone,” said Moorefield, noting that the Distaff exhibit will feature “domestic tools used by women.” The National Craft Council in Ireland helped bring over the contemporary stained glass art exhibit and the Wilson Museum has it first.

As for Danh’s work, the artist thinks it relates to today’s world and current events. “We hold people accountable. There is a sense of justice to be found.”