Can I Rest in Your Shade? A Reflection

My mother rarely speaks about the day her younger cousin Cô Thảo left Viet Nam. For many years, my mother kept her feelings hidden, like old family photographs tucked away in butter cookie tins, taken out only in solitary moments when the nostalgia of her youth could help her navigate her present struggles in Canada. In the wake of Saigon’s fall in 1975, Cô Thảo was one of the first in our family to embark on a perilous journey by boat, bravely taking on this challenge at just 17 years of age. It was the last time my mother saw or heard from Cô Thảo. After numerous attempts to find her whereabouts, many family members have now given up the search, their imaginations oscillating between the hope that she has found a safe harbour on some distant shore and the haunting image of her frail vessel folded into the indifferent waves. 

In Vietnamese, "thảo" has two main meanings: one refers to filial piety, while the other means grass or herb. This notion of plants being transplanted to foreign lands has lingered in my mind ever since I caught fragments of her story as a child. Can these plants survive the journey? Will the new environment provide conditions under which they can thrive? As someone who works in media and film, I am reminded of the late director Abbas Kiarostami’s comment, when asked why he did not leave Iran, that an uprooted tree, when planted on foreign soil, will no longer bear fruit. While tinged with pessimism regarding the possibilities of adaptation and survival, his comparison between plants and the diaspora experience resonates with many communities across various cultural contexts.

I was captivated by the willow trees in Belle Park upon discovering that they are not native to Ontario. The park is home to two species of weeping willows: the Salix Babylonica, or Babylon Willow, which originates from northern China and other parts of Asia, and the Salix Sepulcralis, known as the Weeping Golden Willow, a hybrid of the Babylon. These plants, in fact, are diasporic entities and their offspring.

When this place was made into a golf course in the 1970s, the willows were planted as ornamental features. Since then, as park management has had to undertake environmental remediation because of the site’s previous history as a landfill, poplar trees are being employed to combat soil contamination. However, the willows play their own quiet role in the landscape, preventing erosion with their root systems and providing phytoremediation by absorbing toxins. And they also often serve as settings for encampments of people who don’t otherwise have homes, offering shade and perhaps comfort beneath their undulating branches. 

Rather than an exercise in linear learning from nature, my work is more akin to an attentive practice. In the spring of 2023, when I first visited the willow grove in the park, one of the willows had fallen, its trunk sprawled awkwardly, branches splayed and crushed beneath its weight, while nearby, a blue tarp hung loosely over the remnant of a fire. But the tree wasn’t dead. As I returned periodically over the summer months, I witnessed the fallen willow transform, gradually cloaking itself in a lush emerald; its fluttering leaves cascaded gracefully over the fracture in its trunk—as if the tree sought to conceal its injury. With each visit, I came to know the willows and park’s residents a little better. Alongside the growing familiarity, my questions multiplied. What does it mean to be, and is it possible to be, a non-native entity and also a generous caretaker of the land where one finds oneself? What labour is involved in being ornamental in a Canadian landscape? How do we ask others to care for us without having to perform continuous gratitude? How can we care for others while bearing our own wounds?

A few years before I began working on the Belle Park project, just before the Covid pandemic, a close friend returned from a trip to Viet Nam and gave me two mosquito nets. While they are no longer common in big cities, mosquito nets remain an important part of life in rural towns and are a strong reminder of my childhood. For years, these nets sat unused in my closet. But to me, these nets also represent diasporic entities. I began to wonder about the possible interactions between the nets and willows. When they both sway in the Kingston breeze or droop in the soft summer rain, what conversations might they have?

For me, Belle Park’s histories of contamination and current role as a place of fragile shelter serve as a portent and palimpsest, speaking not only to local issues but also to broader, transboundary concerns of mobility and refuge, intensified by sociopolitical conflicts and climate change.

My mosquito net placed along the willows became a popular hang-out for dragonflies and other winged creatures. One cicada, in particular, chose the net as its final resting place. The other net, hung in the Isabel Bader Center for the Performing Arts, served as a brief respite for students—a utilitarian object displayed in a gallery—while drawing attention to the ornamental labour often expected from the Vietnamese Canadian diaspora.

As plants, weeping willows are known for their rapid growth, often reaching maturity in about 20 years. But how did they come to signify gentleness, grief, and healing across various cultures? In Viet Nam, for instance, the willow branch is frequently associated with Quan Thế Âm, the Bodhisattva of Mercy, where it represents compassion and resilience. However, despite their gentle symbolism, weeping willows have aggressive root systems that can extend to a length three times their height, allowing them to compete fiercely with nearby vegetation for water and nutrients, often choking other plants in the process.

Insights offered by nature are rarely straightforward.

Before the Unearthed exhibition ended, I learned that the mosquito net in the willow grove had disappeared. Upon my return to dismantle the remaining parts of my installation and restore the site to its original state, my mind shifted between various possibilities, but one hopeful thought prevailed—that the net had found a new home, offering protection to someone living in the park.

That night, only one net came home with me.