"Interweaving of History: Dinh Q. Lê at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo," by Natalie Hegert, MutualArt.com
“When dragonflies fly low, rain will fall. When they fly high, the sun will shine. When they fly in between, it will drizzle.”
A haunting voice gently repeats this refrain, a percussive and melodic Vietnamese proverb, as a gathering of dragonflies begins to accumulate across the three screens of Dinh Q. Lê’s video installation, The Farmers and The Helicopters (2006), on view in “Dinh Q. Lê: Memory For Tomorrow” at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. The metaphor slides away as the dragonflies give way to the eponymous subject of Lê’s film, another beast of flight, one with a notorious reputation in Vietnam. The harsh roar of blades slicing the air accompanies archival footage of helicopters in flight over the Southeast Asian countryside.