Bùi Công Khánh’s ‘Dislocate’

^{Head Beam}

The head beam lies at the highest point of the roof and is perched on red cloth to indicate its significance.

In traditional East Asian architecture, the ritual installation of a head beam concludes the construction of the essential structure. Known as lễ thượng lương (‘ceremony of the upper beam’) or lễ cất nóc (‘roof-raising ceremony’) in Vietnamese, this ritual bestows blessings on the new house and the family moving into it.

Door and Door Ornaments

Dislocate consists mostly of wood harvested from jackfruit trees newly felled in storms. The door, however, is recycled from a traditional house. The aged door bears scars and shrapnel from wartime explosions and has a conspicuously different patina from the rest of the structure.

Above it are a pair of ornaments featuring the taijitu—the Daoist symbol of yin and yang—that are adorned with red fabric. For the artist, these ornaments guard Dislocate against potential threats.

Latticework

The pattern on the lattice windows is inspired by the cracked ice and plum blossom motifs common in Chinese vernacular arts of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Evoking a ‘cold window’ (hanchuang 寒窗) by which a student reads on a wintry night, these motifs symbolise scholarly perseverance and the wish for eventual success.

Bùi loosens the angular cracked-ice pattern into the form of chain fences to reflect the repurposing of United States military fences for gardening by the Vietnamese after the war.

United States Military Helmet

The T56-6 Combat Vehicle Crew helmet was worn by the US military’s tank and armoured personnel carrier crews during the Vietnam War.

A sideward view of the helmet is carved on Dislocate, revealing the radio transceiver, microphone, and other electronic accessories that allowed crew members to communicate in a noisy environment.

Mother’s Shirt

This collarless shirt is a type of traditional southern Vietnamese garment called áo bà ba or the ‘Ba Ba shirt’, which is made of an airy fabric which allows for comfort and mobility during farm work. It belonged to Bùi’s mother and holds a deep personal significance for the artist.

Sentinels 

Four sentinels stand guard around Dislocate, featuring sculptures that represent apricot, lotus, chrysanthemum, and pine. These sculptures symbolise the four seasons respectively, adapting the classical Chinese art motifs of the Three Friends of Winter (pine, bamboo, and plum) and the Four Noble Ones (plum, orchid, bamboo, and chrysanthemum) for the climate and culture of Vietnam.

Each consists of a miniature stupa or pagoda—both monuments commemorating the Buddha—on a tall table.

Originating in India, the conical stupa spread across the Buddhist world. In East Asia, it evolved into the pagoda, a square-shaped tiered tower with multiple eaves.

Bùi evokes both architectural typologies to indicate the convergence of the South and East Asian lineages of Buddhism in Vietnam.

Attached to the towers are numerous cannons, which protect the structure against unseen dangers.

Father’s Jacket

The M-1965 field jacket was part of the standard-issue uniform worn by the US armed forces during the Vietnam War. Made of durable and tightly woven cotton fabric and featuring an attachable hood, it provided resistance against rain and wind. This M-1965 field jacket belonged to Bùi’s father, who served as a military officer for the Republic of Vietnam. After the war, Bùi’s father was imprisoned in a re-education camp for this role, and the artist was given his jacket to keep warm in winter. Years later, during a visit to the Bùi clan’s family shrine, the artist learned from his father that they are descendants of Fujianese immigrants.

Grenade

While a deadly weapon, the grenade also resembles a pomegranate, a many-seeded fruit that symbolises the blessing of children in traditional East Asian cultures. In both Vietnamese and Chinese, the word for grenade is derived from the word for pomegranate. Struck by these paradoxical connotations of life and death, Bùi uses a grenade in Dislocate to illustrate the fraught connections between the Vietnamese and Chinese as well as between distant and recent histories.

Machine Pistol

The Škorpion vz. 61 E machine pistol was designed to be a bridge between a handgun and a heavier machine gun. Between 1961 and 1979, some 200,000 of these machine pistols were made in Czechoslovakia. During the war, a number made their way into the hands of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army. Portable and capable of automatic firing, the Škorpion is suited to guerrilla warfare and continues to be favoured by informal combatants.