rễ - root

Rhizomic Thinking in Lens-Based Practice

Creative Photography at RMIT Vietnam operates through rhizomic thinking, a framework where knowledge, culture, and identity function not as hierarchical trees but as interconnected root networks. Like the Vietnamese word rễ, our practice acknowledges that roots are simultaneously individual and collective, visible and subterranean, inherited and constantly regenerating.

We approach lens-based media as a site for exploring culture and heritage across scales, from the micro-intimacies of personal memory to the macro-structures of diasporic experience. Each photograph, video, or installation becomes a node in a larger network, connecting student artists to their communities, histories, and futures.

This micro-macro oscillation defines our pedagogy: students move fluidly between close observation and systemic critique, between autobiography and cultural analysis, between the singular image and the exhibition as ecosystem. The result is artwork that roots itself in specific cultural soil while branching toward universal resonance.