Earlier this year, arebyte hosted an exhibition of Maria Than’s work. Titled Homage To Quan Âm, the exhibition delves deep into the intricate layers of personal identity, cultural assimilation, and the evolution of self-discovery. Inspired by the artist’s own experiences growing up in a Vietnamese-British-French Buddhist family, the exhibition offered a visual and emotional exploration of the complex journey away from refusal and towards acceptance and understanding.
Homage To Quan Âm formed part of arebyte’s artistic focus for 2023/26 themed The Body, The Mind, The Soul and traverses buried childhood memories, mortality, and identity through animation, CGI, AI-generated imagery, interactive digital works and virtual reality to unfold a personal, but relatable, account of staying with the trouble of becoming. Homage To Quan Âm suggests an assimilation with other narratives through the lens of Buddhist philosophy, fostering personal connections that transcend cultural divides and resonate on a deeply human level.
In this interview with arebyte, Maria Than discusses her exhibit, her influences, and using digital technologies as tools in art-making.
How has your upbringing in a Vietnamese-British-French Buddhist family influenced the themes and concepts explored in Homage To Quan Âm?
I was born in the UK, moved to Paris when I was 6 years old, coming from a Vietnamese family, from Saigon. The entire show is a nostalgic, personal, diary-like recounting of the physical, emotional, and collective memories I have shared in a dichotomous way as my Viet family was very much separate from my “western” upbringing.
This dichotomy fragmented my identity heavily as I grew up, and led to feelings of internalised racism that took me years to unpack (I still am today!). I think a lot of second-gen immigrants can relate to specific memories of feeling embarrassed by your parents struggling to speak English/French in public, having to bring your Western friends to a cluttered Asian house full of “kitsch” (according to the West!) furniture and home décor or even having your friends be weirded out by specific customs, smells of certain foods, and other cultural aspects. The nostalgic element is prominent in the show, it is the essential bittersweetness that represents the parallel between the joy and woes of growing up as you break away from a pure, innocent worldview and fall into the harshness of certain realities. I wanted to draw that journey by creating an experience where the audience travels between three distinct areas of the exhibition: refusal, understanding and finally, acceptance.
The exhibition narrates your personal journey of growing up, marked by moments of refusal, understanding, and acceptance. How do these themes manifest throughout the exhibition?
Growing up, my childhood was marked by the dichotomy between familial and religious traditions, and a desire to conform with more mainstream cultural environments—basically trying to Westernise myself into oblivion. As I experienced external racism and discrimination, I denied my Vietnamese roots, leading to a fractured sense of self. In recognition of this complex journey, Homage To Quan Âm unfolds a narrative that mirrors the fragmented nature of identity formation and carries the viewer through the three states mentioned above: “Refusal,” which marks the fear of isolation from early childhood; “Understanding,” which denotes the compassionate appreciation of family; and “Acceptance,” which signifies the embracing of heritage and the meshing together of identities.
In “Refusal,” the main installation “You Wouldn’t Steal a TV” is an interactive piece composed of 3 LED panels mimicking CRT 90’s TV sets showing AI-generated manipulations of The Simpsons, South Park and Malcolm in the Middle, interspersed with flashing images of the Việt Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật prayer in a Karaoke style. The whole is bathed in red with a soundscape of angry Vietnamese parents yelling and fighting that I sourced from a Viet TV drama on YouTube. Behind the TVs is the piece “HOME AGE.” As the audience sits on the prayer cushions to watch TV, a webcam captures their movements onto a live projection behind the screens, where each pixel is replaced by an AI generated image of a god/ddess and engulfs the audience in maximalist religious iconography, a reminder that Big Buddhas are watching you and the prayer never stops.
In “Understanding,” the main installation “Trời ơi! / Oh My God!” is an 8-screen art installation bathed in orange lighting that merges the concepts of karma and surveillance, comparing the omnipresent watch of Buddhas to modern CCTV systems, an extension of “Big Buddhas are watching you” but thriving towards a deeper understanding of the intents behind the prescriptions of my Viet Buddhist cultural upbringing, aka the reason why my mom was so adamant on making us pray for so long. It shows my life through various webcams and animations over eight hours, emphasising the idea that one’s actions are always being monitored—both divinely and technologically. The work creatively engages with the unquantifiable nature of karma, likening it to a video game where one might “restart” with a clean slate. This blend of religious symbolism, technological oversight, and cultural references, like the manga Death Note, presents a contemporary take on accountability and the inescapability of being watched, inviting reflection on spiritual and social surveillance.
In “Acceptance,” the main installation “Bulle Personnelle / personal bubble” is a VR experience bathed in yellow lighting that revisits my childhood memories, focusing on my family’s former prayer room in Paris, now a virtual space set against a sunset landscape. Crafted by 3D designer Petter Schölander with my oral storytelling, it explores the impermanence of memories and emotions, embodying Buddhist principles of life’s transitory nature. Objects in the VR signify six distinct family stories, complemented by a soundtrack by Ariel Karsh that reinterprets Beethoven’s Sonata Pathétique, reflecting on nostalgia and the fleeting moments of existence. This virtual exhibition blends personal recollections with the broader, universal concept of impermanence, encouraging deep reflection on the ephemeral quality of human experiences.
You employ digital tools and technologies like CGI, AI-generated imagery, and virtual reality. How do you see technology intersecting with the exploration of identity and memory?
Generative AI tools have been a form of digital archiving for me and helped me bring my stories to life as both emotional and experiential memories. Memory itself is a concept of impermanence: it constantly corrupts, evolves and adapts, and my design processes represent this. Since a lot of my generation was essentially raised by the internet, a lot of us tend to have an ambivalent view of digital tools as a way to archive our experiences through snapping a quick shot on the phone, versus a tool that just replaces our ability to remember as we rely so heavily on our phones to collect, save and hoard data. This idea of having to accept memory as something so impermanent and elusive is difficult to a lot of people, and I’ve used digital tech to purposefully corrupt and play around with a visualisation of a core memory as a way to process the feeling associated to the memory itself, but also as a way to archive and contextualise it for others. Using digital tools and emerging forms of tech allows me to represent the different aspects of memories from the abstract to the physical, the individual versus the collective, the emotional to the experiential and immersive tech/art creates that “relatable” link for the audience, since the show itself is so personal. It allows the audience to not only be in my shoes, but to also reflect on how certain aspects of my experience mirrors their own within their identities. It shapes the experience of the narrative in a more approachable way.
What are your influences and which artists are you currently excited about?
Viet-British designer Sophia Luu who tackles difficult topics with “serious joy,” especially her trauma-informed work on child sexual abuse called “Secrets Worth Sharing” and how she inspired me to get back into illustration after university.
I looooove Nguyễn Vũ Trụ’s / VŨTRỤ Inc’s latest exhibition in Sydney at the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art LEGEND OF ASIA® SPORT SHOES !!! It’s a super funny satirical exploration of divinity and hype culture, contemporary art and revealing the sacred within a pair of shoes.
I am obsessed with the creative process behind the iconic YouTube Australian animation The Big Lez Show by Jarrad Wright, from the simplicity of the mediums to how they embrace the insanity of their humour and MS-paint animation style. It’s genius, its unique, the humour is on point and it’s essentially a one-man-show, with all the animations, voiceovers and storylines developed by Jarrad.
Finally, there’s the AN Viet Archives which is the largest Vietnamese community collection in the UK. Together with Hackney Archives and Hackney Chinese Community Services, the collection was saved when the An Viet Foundation, which was established in London in 1981, closed in 2017. AN Viet Archives are keeping our Viet culture alive and I’m so happy that there are people out there working hard on bringing those unheard stories to life.
Maria Than is a UK-based creative technologist, educator, activist & co-founder of Ricebox Studio. Using Augmented Reality, illustration and AI-generated content, she explores themes of fragmented identity, Buddhism, over-productivity, internalised racism and mental health and exhibited in London, Paris, New York, South Korea, Amsterdam and Toronto. She lectures in design, creative and ethics of AI and works at Child Rights International Network as a Digital Designer.
Meeting the growing demand for immersive experiences and digital content creation, arebyte pioneers new forms of engagement with creative technologies, to critically explore the impact of technology in contemporary society.
From digital environments, online exhibitions to live performances, arebyte’s art programme spans VR, AR, motion capture, CGI, AI, blockchain technology, and draws 10,000 visitors per year to its gallery in East London, with a yearly online audience of 350,000 which is constantly growing.
arebyte is committed to further support London’s creatives by providing affordable workspaces in the capital city. In partnership with private landlords and Councils, arebyte strives to preserve a vibrant community of 300 artists, makers and designers in East and South London.
