This lightbox was created for the exhibition, Erasure, an interactive sculptural and video installation created by Dinh Q. Le that draws on issues concerning refugees and asylum seekers. It is a large moving image of an eighteenth century tall ship being slowly consumed by flames.

The artist's affinity with asylum-seekers stands in stark contrast with many countries’ views on refugees. Often, by labeling refugees as “others” they remove the possibility of identifying with asylum seekers, replacing it with ambivalent distance or suspicion. “Erasure” weaves history into memory and location, poetically yet critically questioning methods of remembrance. By directly involving audiences in the act of recollection, Lê expands on society’s perceived role in documenting events and archiving information.

Born in Vietnam in 1968, Lê moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1979 after fighting erupted between the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge near Ha Tien at the Cambodian border. As a refugee himself, Lê was motivated to produce Erasure by the tragic sinking of an asylum seeker’s boat off Christmas Island, Australia in December 2010. This image of a burning ship was an actual staging of a replica of Captain James Cook, a British explorer who made the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia.