Welcome to Dysphoria On Your Tongue. A 2021, Graphic Design major project.
This project contains;
- A physical book - includes narrative, photography and artworks
- A digital upload of the book
- Three tapestries - standing at 150cm tall and 80cm wide
- A portfolio page featuring aspects/summary of the project
ABOUT THE AUTHOR/DESIGNER
Linda Tran is an Asian-Australian graphic designer and artist who enjoys writing as a hobby. She is also a photographer in training, with hands as shaky as an earthquake and the most dreadful eyesight. To make up for the fact that she’s only 5ft tall, she’s in a constant state of rage. Being lactose intolerant never stopped her from downing chocolate milk, and that won’t be changing any time soon.
She spent four years in high school believing that she’d be studying architecture but found out she’s absolutely horrid at maths and changed her mind in her last year. Oh, and also due to the fact that her architecture major in high school destroyed her. Who thought trying to create a whole proscenium theatre running on solar power by the seaside in a boat-shaped structure would be that difficult? Good ideas and no skills to back it up is truly a curse.
Besides that, Linda admits to hoarding scented candles and drinking too much tea. She owns a pet bunny who likes to do zoomies on her face while she’s knocked out from pulling all-nighters and crying over fictional characters. She often turns to vulgarity as a form of expression and also to channel her inner Aussie.
This will be her first printed visual book and will also mark the final step in obtaining her Bachelor degree.
ABOUT THE BOOK
This book is dedicated to those who never felt right in their own skin; those who struggled to love who they are. As someone who is Asian and born in Australia, Linda often struggled to find her footing between her ethnicity and her nationality. Having spent most of her life being told she’s neither one nor the other caused her a lot of internal turmoil.
Linda spent the majority of her childhood trying to appear more ‘Australian’ as she felt ashamed of her Vietnamese ethnicity. Despite attending Asian-dominated schools, she still experienced a lot of internalised racism.
This may not seem like much to some, but to many other people, this is a struggle they often don’t realise or a struggle that they end up undermining. This is a project weaved with years worth of unpacked emotions and experience of one ‘third culture child.’ While Linda can not speak of the same for every other person who has experienced this, she will still present to you her story.
This is an encouragement to all the third culture children.
This is a dedication to the ignorant.
NARRATIVE
Green. Red.
The two colours clashed, stirring and tangling but refusing to blend. Vivid and strong - they seeped through the pores of my unevenly toasted skin and the lines between these two contrasting pigments started to blur. I struggled to define them. Desperation forced me to clutch onto the bold and alluring green, begging it for any form of salvation, any form of identity, no regard for that deep red whatsoever and I watched as it slipped through my burning fingertips.
Red became nothing but a dull and constant itch under my skin.
I’ve never liked the red. I’ve never liked how the red's humidity gripped my skin like melted sugar - like a vice. Or the thick scent of smoke that clawed at my throat with every gulp of air, and the stench of scorched wood from the coils that were supposed to fend off the winged vampires of night. I remembered the hectic blares and thundering roars of cars and motorbikes hammering through my skull in this foreign land that my parents once called home. So I've never really understood the red's appeal to foreigners. Never understood why they were so obsessed with that bowl of steaming hot beef broth whose name they could never pronounce correctly, always exclaiming - singing about how that sweet aroma of herbs had wafted through their nostrils. I couldn’t understand. Perhaps I was too young, perhaps I was too oblivious, too drowned in the thoughts of green. Or maybe I just simply didn’t want to understand, too in denial, too afraid and maybe even too embarrassed to admit my familiarity and connection to the red that crawls on my skin.
Green. Red.
Enchanting, enthralling, entrancing.
Green. Green compared to red was almost heavenly and I hadn’t, for one second, felt remorseful for embracing the deep and picturesque colour. I gazed, immersed with how the salty waters hugged the green much like a lover would. The touch of clean air melted on my tongue much like that delightful, sugary chocolate biscuit that I adored and loved to eat.
However, denial is merely temporary bliss.
For years, I had believed that I didn’t need red and that the green would suffice. That the green was enough to preserve me, to give me a place to call home, to give me a tongue to use. But time moves swiftly without any regard for my feelings, can I really say that green runs in my constantly pumping veins? Where is that heavenly green I saw as a child? And I’m lost, stranded, the lines that I thought I had defined starts to blur again. And I’m desperate, desperately retrieving, reclaiming, rebuilding what I’m left with. Neither green nor red.
Australia. Vietnam.
Click the image above to see the full digital book!
