This morning, 9th May 2013, the first press conference on the list of artists selected to Singapore Biennale 2013 was taken place in Singapore Art Museum. A co-curator from Vietnam, I participated in this press conference by skype. My job was to introduce two in the works of Vietnamese artists selected to Singapore Biennale 2013 ( initially the number of works to be introduced were 3, from 3 artists, but at the end of day, only 2 artworks from 2 artists were requested to be introduced). Two these artworks are INTO THE SEA by Le Brothers Thanh&Hai, and SPECULA by Nguyen Oanh Phi Phi
considering a nice chance for someone who re concerned to Vietnamese contemporary art (or contemporary Vietnamese art), I'm thinking of posting my introduction part here. Actually, each artist had only 1 and half minutes to be introduced, so in my talk I could only accomplish about 80 % of what I post here in text form, (even thought the text from here is very very brief)
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This could be considered the first Singapore Biennale version where the participation of Vietnamese artists is so divert. The diversity here is not only in terms of geography- when works of artists from all three cities of Vietnam, Hanoi, Hue,Hochiminh city, and the works of Vietnamese artists who are living and working in abroad are together on view- but also in terms of the works’ different discursive subject matters which range from anti-ideological ones (in the way of Chinese contemporary art in 90s), to more complicated ones such as the questions on relationship between the past and the present in defining the contemporary
Two works are featured in this press conference are “Specula”, by Nguyen Oanh Phi Phi, and“Into The Sea” by Le Brothers Thanh& Hai
The first work to be introduced is “Specula”, by Nguyen Oanh Phi Phi
Nguyen Oanh Phi Phi brings to Singapore Biennale 2013 a lacquer based work- Specula. Specula is the latin word, which might be translated into English as: ”the mirrors”
"specula" by Nguyen Oanh Phi Phi, seen from outside and inside
We may need to know that, before the French came to Vietnam, in Vietnam, lacquer originally only was used for the decoration and protection the statues in pagodas. It was the French who changed the original format of lacquer and made it into an ART medium
However the interesting point here is that the Lacquer painting has been always seen in Vietnam as representing Vietnamese cultural identity.
Nguyen Oanh Phi Phi is a Vietnamese –American artist, who now is living in Europe. Since 2005, she came back to Vietnam to learn and work with lacquer medium, using this process of learning and working as her journey into the question of that so called National and cultural identity.
Seen from this perspective, specula could be considered as her own mirror,which reflects her shadow, and by which, show her the relationship between The Self and The Me of her. It is right here, the work could be a metaphor of what Lacan once termed “mirror stage”, which is the most important stage in the psychological development of human being when this is the first time she can see herself as another, and by which can be fully aware of herself.
The work specula, seen from outside, looks highly industrial and it reminds us of what subaltern studies once termed “political modernity” that the French Colonialism introduced to Vietnam in the beginning of the last century. At the same time, it also looks like a highly minimalist work from 70s, and 80s in America, for example (and especially) by artist Richard Serra.
However,at the moment entering inside the work, the audiences immediately found they are encircled by a highly ritualistic space where, the nature and the culture meet, the conceptual and the emotional meet, the abstract and the realistic meet, the transcendence and the everyday-life meet. In summary, in this kind of space, all that a Western “male connoiseur” has been proud of, such as a great and systematic knowledge of ART history, or the necessary critical distance when “appreciating” an ART work, cannot help him. This is the place where both LOGOS and LANGUAGE are failed, to borrow Derrida words.
The tensity of the work created by the conflicts between the inside and the outside seem also the metaphor of the artist’s answer for the question of cultural and national identity, which for her, is not an original product AT ALL, but a continuing and endless process of the substitution between the THEY and the WE
From this perspective, the work responds to the theme “If the world changed” of Singapore Biennale 2013 by its vision of a new way of looking to the relationship between the THEY and the WE, the most important relationship which is now defining and, in a sense, making trouble for the world we are living in
Second work to be introduced is “Into The Sea” by Le Brothers Thanh& Hai
Le Brother Thanh & Hai are two artists-twins brothers who are living and working in Hue city
Hue is very small city in Vietnam, which is often considered peripherical location for contemporary art in comparison with Hanoi and HCMC. For this reason, so far,we have been very difficult to see a Hue-based artist in those international giant stage for contemporary art such as Singapore Biennale, until this time
Their work for Singapore Biennale 2013 is a three-colors-channel film, Into The Sea”
some scene in the film "Into The Sea" by Le brothers Thanh&Hai
This work can be seen as a melancholic and poetic reflection of two artists on the very modern history of Vietnam, which has been structured by an endless process of unity and separation, not only in geographical, but in psychological term as well
The film shows an imagined and surrealistic journey of two identical men, who are in strange dresses, and with endless weird movements and gestures, in a nowhere-land.
The same with Nguyen Oanh Phi Phi's work, when watching Le Brother’s film, the audiences may getting lost in multiple, complicated and overlapped metaphors in terms of they seem impossible to conceptualize what they are watching. In other words, they will be very difficult in “understanding” the work in terms of being able to capture a plot
However, the more the audience let themselves to be one with the film by immersing and flowing with its rhymth of visual movements, by freely floating with the melancholic melody played and recorded live by a violinist when he was watching the film, the more they will find a way-in to enter to the work, which is no epistemical, but phenomenological
The work responds with the theme “If The World Changed” of Singapore Biennale 2013 not only by the new way of telling story from two Vietnamese artists who are living and working in a peripherical location in Vietnam, but also by the very content of the story about the change- which now is seen as an endless process of unity and separation
The work also introduces a new trend of local contemporary Vietnamese artists. Now they start to stop using contemporary art practice as the ideological weapon which some time falls easily into the trap of political exoticism, but using it as the critical and self-reflexive instrument to investigate some new issues for Vietnamese contemporary art such as the relationship between past and present,memories and reality, fantasy and everyday life, etc.
It also shows the most recent concerns of Vietnamese contemporary artist in terms of art medium; the artists more and more start experimenting with moving images medium. This is totally different with the time before, when Vietnamese contemporary art has been often identified with performance and installation art.
Nguyen Nhu Huy
independent curator/visual artist/art critic
artistic director of ZeroStation
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