Micah Lewis-Văn Sweezie: Simpler Times
April 23rd - June 7th
Opening reception: April 23rd, 6-9pm
Old Friends is pleased to present Simpler Times, the gallery’s first solo exhibition with Vietnamese-American artist Micah Lewis-Văn Sweezie. Sweezie uses industrially molded and cast forms to appropriate symbols of rubber, ceramic, and latex production, narrating histories of material and labor exploitation in Vietnam. At the root of their studies, a revolutionary path incited on rubber plantations is the suppressed material history haunting the “readymade.”
This body of work was completed during Sweezie’s 2024 residency in the Vietnamese village of Bát Tràng. The village has operated as a major ceramic production site for centuries, each household traditionally specializing in one element of the process - clay mixing, surface painting, mold making - diversifying production across multiple family businesses, and developing interreliance within the community. Embedding themself in Bát Tràng’s artisan community, Sweezie studied these production techniques, working with local masters to reconstrue forms typically designated for export. Sweezie alters the ornamental patterns covering each piece, weaving an ominous impression of tire treads through the floral and geometric illustrations, as in Traditional/Tread Bottle Set (2024). Though familiar in basic design, individual attention remains deeply present in the cobalt brushstrokes. The ceramic vessels are porcelain - a material once deemed so valuable by colonial interests that it earned the moniker “white gold.”
Sweezie’s sculpture straddles a divide between industrial lineage and material presence. Mass-produced forms hold a mournful sense of displacement from their cultural source, yet through personal attentiveness, Sweezie awakens a critical presence. The works center human intervention in industrial production, rebuking the colonial mechanisms that obscure and dislocate evidence of labor.
