Artist Talk “Speak Dating” 

03 pm, Wed 24 Jan 2024
Manzi Art Space, 14 Phan Huy Ích, Ba Đình, Hà Nội

Over the last half-century, many generations of Vietnamese have come to Germany to live, study, or work. Some people returned to their homeland, others stayed, emigrated permanently, and founded a family in Germany.

In a side program of the exhibition “The Return” by the Le Brothers, the audience will have the opportunity to talk in a “speak-dating” format directly to Vietnamese people who have returned from Germany and who are temporarily here for a short stay. Our guest speakers will share different perspectives and backgrounds: international students, labor exchange workers, trainees, immigrants, and children of immigrants. They all come from different generations and are between 20 and 80 years old. The speakers will share their personal experiences and stories and dialogue with the audience within the exhibition’s topics.

The program will be in a unique format – “speak-dating” – coordinated by educator Hương Mi Lê. 5 tables of 5 speakers will hold simultaneous talks with 5 different audiences. These audiences will rotate so that they can interact with each speaker.

Tịch mịch

08 pm, Tues 23 Jan 2024
Manzi Artspace, 14 Phan Huy Ích, Ba Đình, Hà Nội

“In perfect stillness or deep, full silence, yet, there are myriad of sounds…”
The energy of sound waves
& The counterforce of emotions
Stimulations in the outer space
& Instant reactions of the inner body
A tremble, A vibration, A sigh,…

All of these coincidences both come into being and fade away in the last concert of this Cat year at manzi. Four female artists with diverse backgrounds and various musical colors will listen, feel, be in monologue or dialogue with each other and with the audience.

With the sophistication in exploiting different forms of sound from the famous Vietnamese traditional musical instrument – Đàn Bầu (monochord), the diversity in vocal expressions are combined with electronic elements in shades we have never before encountered, this improvised performance suggests a new space of stillness/ silence/solitude, where the ‘so-called’ absence of sound and emptiness of time be presented and be heard.

Ngô Trà My is Đàn Bầu lecture in Vietnam National Academy of Music. She is one of the famous Đàn Bầu soloists in Viet Nam. Her fields of activities are teaching, performing, and researching traditional, contemporary and experimental music. She has participated in many art events in Vietnam and around the world. Trà My is the Vietnamese representative Music Committee and a member of the Asia Traditional Orchestra, the advisor of the C aseanConsonant Ensemble member of The Six Tones international experimental music group, Thang Long traditional music group, MMTM new music group.

Vũ Thị Thùy Linh is a singer and wooden block player in Ả Đào (Ca Trù) performance. She studied Đàn Tam Thập Lục (Vietnamese hammered Dulcimer) at Vietnam National Academy of Music from 1999 to 2011. Since 2011, she has become a teacher in the traditional music department at Vietnam National Academy of Music. In 2016, she earned her master degree in program “Methods in teaching Đàn Tam Thập Lục”. From 2008 to 2010, she studied and performed with Thăng Long Ả Đào Club. Thùy Linh had a great opportunity to study Ả Đào with the late artisan NGUYỄN Thị Chúc from 2009 to 2014. She is the co-founder of Phú Thị Ả Đào Group which was established in 2014. And since 2019, Thùy Linh has co-organized and performed Ả Đào monthly at Cao Sơn Trà Quán in Hanoi. Thùy Linh earned numerous awards in her career and represents Vietnamese Ả Đào singing in international events and festivals.

Lương Huệ Trinh obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Jazz Keyboard at Vietnam National Academy of Music in 2010. Since then, she has focused on electroacoustic music. From 2015 to 2018, she pursued a master degree in Multimedia Composition and ‘New Techniques in Composition’ Program at Hochschule für Musik & Theater Hamburg via the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship.

LƯƠNG is interested in exploring traditional and experimental elements in music and visuals, in scenography, and in organizing site-specific performances. Not only active as a composer but also an improviser, her work has been performed in many different countries in Asia, Europe, Australia, Americas, and Africa.

Marijana Janevska born in 1990 in Skopje, Macedonia, is a composer and performer. She studied violin and composition at the Faculty of Music in Skopje. In 2020 she completed her master degree in composition with Ming Tsao, Gordon Williamson and Joachim Heintz at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover. She is currently studying there in the Solo Klass program for composition under the direction of Aaron Cassidy, Gordon Williamson and Joachim Heintz. She has written solo, chamber, choir, orchestra and electronic music.

Her works have been performed at numerous concerts and festivals, including: Musik21 Festival, ZKM Next Generation Festival, Klangbrücken Festival, TRAIECT Festival, Hellwach Festival, ICSC, Music BIENNALE, Tage für neue Musik in Zürich, TIEM Festival in Teheran and so on. She has received first prize at the “9th Pre-Art competition for young composers” in Zurich, “Klaus Hubert Composition Prize”; for electronic music, as well as scholarship for composition from the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony, Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung and Deutschen Musikrat.

’An Unbearable Lightness Between Sky and Water' 

Opening: 06 pm – 08 pm, Fri 12 Jan 2024
Exhibition: 10 am – 07 pm, Tues – Thurs 13 Jan – 07 Feb 2024
Galerie Quynh, 118 Nguyễn Văn Thủ, Đa Kao Ward, D.1, HCMC

Galerie Quynh is excited to present ‘An Unbearable Lightness Between Sky and Water’ – a solo exhibition by Lien Truong featuring some of her most ambitious work to date. The show weaves together languages of paint, textile, and food, forming a hybrid, diasporic language of love dedicated to Truong’s late mother who passed in April last year. Built on a practice long examining material ideologies and notions of heritage, the works blend painting techniques and philosophies with military, textile, and food histories, alongside a timeline of Truong’s family’s migration from north to south Vietnam, then to the United States.

Opening: 05 pm, Sat 13 Jan 2024
Exhibition: 10 am – 06:30 pm, 13 Jan – 02 Feb 2024
Hanoi Studio Gallery, No. 23-25 Mạc Đĩnh Chi, Trúc Bạch, Ba Đình, Hà Nội

The artist created the whimsical term to give us the chance to travel through our imaginations and view his Human Realm in a non-obtrusive way.

Given that both his mother and grandmother were Thành Đồng and Đồng both are priestess in Đạo Mẫu (or Mother Goddess religion), Pham Tuan Tu was reared surrounded by mediumship rites and in the Vietnamese cultural fabric, having been impacted by the Đạo Mẫu spiritual tradition. As a result, the artist’s self-reflection has always included the world of Deities and the lines between the living and the dead. He muses over the complexities and ambiguities surrounding his own identity in the heterogeneous and multifaceted universe of human existence, which encompasses both masculine and feminine traits and exteriors. It’s a world of emotions and senses, one that serves as a personal source of energy for any individual.

Although we frequently only see the completed piece of art, the process of creating art involves a great deal of introspection and external research on the part of the artist. Pham Tuan Tu’s creative process includes figuring out a medium that is sufficiently expressive for his narrative. It’s a voyage, and properly bringing it to the painting canvas is difficult. An assortment of antiques, aged wood, and oil paints are just a few of the elements the artist looks for to tell his story. When the brushstrokes on the canvas’ surface blend in perfectly with the wooden frame, the ancient wood’s layers of time and old stories are layered in a sophisticated and entrancing way. Over the past 20 years, Pham Tuan Tu’s creations have consistently embodied the spirit of traditional Vietnamese folk carvings while also embracing current life, blending elements of originality and inheritance.

The Disoriented Garden… A Breath of Dream

11 am – 06 pm, Tues – Sat, 12 Dec 2023 – 08 Mar 2024
Sàn Art, Units B6.16 and B6.17, 6th Floor, Block B Office, Millennium Masteri, Ward 6, District 4, HCMC (enter via Nguyen Huu Hao street)

Centred on the concept of the garden as a living, regenerative library, “The Disoriented Garden…A Breath of Dream” foregrounds the ecologies that devastate what is intimate and hallow. Through a multimedia installation of video, painting, and sculpture, the artist brings our senses into contact with Vietnam’s Central Highlands: a densely layered soundscape teeming with memory, ancestors, insects, animals, and plants imbued with agency, and varied residues of violent conquest or soft power.

Considering land as witness, the exhibition draws our attention to the overshadowed histories beneath our feet, and, in so doing, intricately constructs an immersive portrait of the geopolitical, environmental, and spiritual subjects contained within.

This exhibition was created as part of the Han Nefkens Foundation–Southeast Asian Video Art Production Grant, aimed at supporting the development of the contemporary video arts field for artists living in Southeast Asia. Premiering at Sàn Art, Tung’s show will also be presented at partner institutions across the globe, including Sa Sa Art Projects (Cambodia), the Jim Thompson Art Center (Thailand), Museion (Italy), Busan Museum of Art (South Korea) and the Prameya Art Foundation (India).

Born in 1986, Trương Công Tùng grew up in Dak Lak among various ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. He graduated from the Ho Chi Minh Fine Arts University in 2010, majoring in lacquer painting. With research interests in science, cosmology, philosophy and the environment, Truong Cong Tung works with a range of media, including video, installation, painting and found objects, which reflect personal contemplations on the cultural and geopolitical shifts of modernization, as embodied in the morphing ecology, belief or mythology of a land. He is also a member of Art Labor (founded in 2012), a collective working between visual art and social/life sciences to produce alternative non-formal knowledge via artistic and cultural activities in various public contexts and locales.

Exhibition “The Return”

Opening: 05 pm, Mon 08 Jan 2024
Exhibition: 08 – 28 Jan 2023
Artists talk: 10 am – 12 pm, Sun 14 Dec 2023
Manzi Exhibition Space, 2 Hàng Bún, Ba Đình, Hà Nội

“The Return” is the latest art project of Le Brothers, following their previous art project that begins by “The Bridge” (2010), a series of on-site performances from the Hien Luong Bridge, which divided Vietnam into the two regions of the North and the South, to the North-South Korean border near Panmunjom, and the Berlin Wall that divided Germany for nearly half a century. “Separation and Reunion” became one of the major topics of the twin artists for more than a decade when arts became a channel to reveal the individual history, memories, and the past with many layers and unknown meanderings.

During the two residency months of March-April 2023 in Germany, Le Brothers met and talked with many people in the Vietnamese expatriate community living in cities such as Halle, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, and Leipzig. They come from various historical periods and backgrounds: international students and labor exchange workers in the 70s and 80s, immigrant workers after Doi Moi (Renovation period, 1990s), second-generation young people born and raised in Germany, and other Vietnamese students studying abroad in recent years.

This visual exhibition is a multimedia installation built by hundreds of photo documents selected from more than 1,500 images, and a video of the twin artists in conversation with Vietnamese people in Germany. The photos printed in different dimensions and hung on large-scale nets in the gallery create a multi-layered visual installation.

The pictures are both separated and overlapped on each other like layers of memory that time can hardly erase as a colorful collage panorama of the diaspora. The single conversation, image, and video record is a metaphor for leaving and returning in many twists and turns, feelings, desires, and ambiguities about the future where memories and reality blur into one.

Triển lãm 42 : 3 | GÓI – MỞ

Opening: 05 pm, Fri 12 Jan 2023
Exhibition: 09 am – 06 pm, 12 – 26 Jan 2024
Atena Gallery, 96 Trần Quốc Toản, Hà Nội

Exhibition 42 : 3 | GÓI – MỞ is the third annual exhibition of 42Painting Studio. This year the exhibition will be held near the Lunar New Year with the desire to preserve the image of people as the main theme. We, as organizers, aspire to bring some of the personal stories and thoughts regarding homesickness, family values, and personal worries to the exhibition 42:3 | GÓI – MỞ this time.

The exhibition includes 14 artists who are members of 42Painting Studio and guests:
Artist Duong Manh Quyet
Artist Le Anh Dung
Artist Cao Van Thuc
Artist Nguyen Hoang Dung
Artist Dao Thao Phuong
Artist Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan
Artist Tran Ngoc Minh
Artist Dao Anh Viet
Artist Tran Tram
Artist Pham Duy Ly
Artist Nguyen Duy Anh
Artist Nguyen Duy Dat
Artist Vang Hai Hung
Artist Nguyen Van Tuan

Mystical Topography

Until Jan 28, 2024, 09 am – 08 pm,
Annam Gallery, 371/4 Hai Ba Trung Street, D3, HCMC

Le Ba Dang (1921-2015) stands as one of the renowned modern Vietnamese artists who gained recognition in Europe in the latter half of the 20th century through a cross-disciplinary visual language system imbued with distinct individuality. Although he lived and practised far from his homeland, his works flourish from the Vietnamese roots, immersed with the Vietnamese identity, ,culture, and history. His practice is built upon meticulous and scientifically rigorous research, creating unique approaches and techniques in handmade paper production, including lithography, serigraphy combined with gilding technique termed “Lebadanggraphie,” and collage and superimposition – mixing sculpture and bas-relief, to create elevated spatial compositions coined as “Spacegraphie.” The latter technique inspired the curatorial concept of this exhibition.

Exhibition “To each their own sky”

Until Jan 28, 2024, 09 am – 08 pm, Tues – Sun
Mo Art Space, Floor B3, 136 Hang Trong Street, Hoan Kiem District.

A solo exhibition by artist Nguyen Hoa.

Trained in Sculpture, Nguyen Hoa embraced painting as an additional medium for expressing his artistic spirit—a medium that serves as both a reflection upon and resistance to time. Each of his compositions, meticulously crafted and deliberately scarce, forms part of a series of reflections, sometimes comprising no more than three pieces.Throughout the series, ancient architectural details act as a frame—a metaphor laden with poignancy and conflict, unraveling scenes, rituals, routines, and rules not only of history and heritage but also of the very fabric of existence that any artist residing and working in the ancient capital of Hue inevitably carries along.”

”At the Roots, the Mirage is Clear”

10 am – 07 pm, Tues – Sun 10 Dec 2023 – 04 Feb 2024
Gate Gate Gallery, 55 Văn Miếu, Đống Đa, Hà Nội

Wandering through a forest or amidst a sprawling landscape, we see how nature is crafting space for symbiosis. The term “roots” assumes diverse forms: the arboreal roots of trees, the origins of problems, the tendrils of hair, or the underpinnings of one’s being. Each manifestation gestures towards a depth, submerged and concealed, typically eluding immediate perception. Yet, paradoxically, these concealed facets serve as the genesis, the unfurling, the descent, and the culmination of all things. So why do we call them roots? How can our roots be discerned, discovered, or sensed? Where are we when we realised we are at the roots?

Gate Gate proudly represents “At the roots, the mirage is clear | Dưới gốc, mờ ảo hiện” – A thoughtful dialogue between artists Nguyen TraMi and Vũ Trung as they embark their journey to find their nature and origins. While the works of Trà Mi Nguyễn and Vũ Đức Trung hold distinct and distinguished positions, they also somehow engage in dialogues between the traditions of their respective crafts. These dialogues offer viewers an alternative context, encouraging them to observe and perceive not only as folk art but also to extend their reflections to contemporary society. In this dynamic exchange, art becomes a bridge that connects past and present, inviting us to contemplate the evolving culture and society. Deeper still, they connect us as we contemplate the roots, for it is in returning to the roots that the mirage becomes apparent.

Exhibition curated by Nam Nguyen.

Outdoor display of antique artifacts 

Until the end of 2024, Pleiku City, Gia Lai Province

An outdoor exhibition entitled “Tay Nguyen – Gia Lai Paradise” displaying antique artifacts of local ethnic people.

Highlights of the exhibition are a white elephant bone chair dating back 700 years and a collection of elephant hunting tools dating back more than 100 years of the M'Nong ethnic group.

On display are thousands of antique artifacts of collector Dang Minh Tam, including musical instruments, hunting and weaving tools, ceremonial objects, jewelry items and other items in the life of ethnic groups in the five Central Highlands provinces.

Exhibition “A Tide of Emotions”