Join artist Naeem Mohaiemen in conversation with Sarah Le Quang Sang and Benjamin Tran alongside Mohaiemen’s exhibition.

THROUGH A MIRROR, DARKLY explores history, memory and overlooked stories. Through film, photography and printmaking, Mohaiemen examines why some political events are remembered while others are forgotten, focusing on the 1970 student protest shootings in the United States, political movements in Bangladesh, the Vietnam war and connections between local and global histories.

Naeem, Sarah and Benjamin will, among other topics, discuss how the Vietnam War is remembered across the Vietnamese diaspora and within Vietnam, considering questions of identity, authenticity, and the role of artists in shaping historical narratives. Drawing on dispersed archives, including the An-Viet Hackney archive, and connections between Vietnam, France, and Algeria, the discussion will examine how alternative histories emerge beyond dominant American perspectives.

Naeem Mohaiemen was born in London, UK, grew up in Dhaka, Bangladesh and currently lives and works in New York, USA. He combines film installations, photographic collages, and drawing-based prints to research the forever yearning for left utopias against silos of race and religion, and the family unit as container for the many modernist projects of the last century. He is equally critical of fatal errors among the revolutionary left, as well as forms of hegemonic capitalism. Projects have taken on the crisis of decolonial movements that replicate old oppressions in new forms, the obscuring of class as a mode of thinking through the idea of utopia, and the suffocating position of the English language within the triumphalism of global capital.

Sarah Le Quang Sang is the Founder and Director of SLQS Gallery, where she leads a programme dedicated to supporting diverse, intergenerational women and queer artists. Her career is shaped by a personal journey marked by resilience, reinvention, and a deep commitment to creating platforms that reflect the multiplicity of contemporary artistic experience. Raised across Gabon, Cameroon, France and the UK, Le Quang Sang developed an expansive, inclusive worldview from an early age, one that continues to inform her belief that there is no single way to live, make art, or engage with culture. SLQS Gallery operates as an extension of this ethos, championing difference, experimentation and critical dialogue. After studying at Acting International in Paris (2000-2001), Le Quang Sang read International Business, Finance, and Economics at the University of Manchester (2001-2004) before completing her MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths (2016-2018).

Benjamin Tran is a researcher specialising in the Vietnam War and its aftermath. His work primarily focuses on South Vietnamese narratives of the war, exploring perspectives that have often been overlooked within dominant Western accounts. His research seeks to broaden understandings of the conflict by highlighting the diverse voices, experiences, and memories that shaped South Vietnamese society during the war and how this experience shapes the diaspora today. He is particularly interested in questions of memory, identity, displacement, and the ways in which the legacy of the Vietnam War continues to influence Vietnamese communities and their descendants in the United Kingdom.

Description supplied by the event organiser.