Exhibition “Desolation”

Opening: 06 pm – 09 pm, Thurs 01 Feb 2024
Exhibition: 11 am – 09 pm, 01 – 22 Feb 2024
A2Z Gallery, 24 rue de l’E’vhaude’, 75006 Paris

For Le Thuy, human have lost their connection with the earth through their relentless quest to make it their own.

A graduate of the Fine Arts University of Vietnam, the artist sees her work as a witness to the present times, reflecting contemporary events through her prism and her use of traditional Vietnamese painting techniques.

Thus, in her latest exhibition, Le Thuy expresses through her works the complexities of our existence, of danger, instability and the ceaseless quest for sanctuary. The artist recounts a two-part odyssey, exploring man’s tendency to seek solace in the midst of chaos.

Le Thuy is an artist based in Hoi An, Viet Nam. Graduated with a BA in Fine Arts, she has exhibited consistently, both domestic and international. Most notably, Hongkong 2022, Singapore 2016. Her recent solo exhibitions are “The Silence is Deafening” Vietnam 2020, and “Uninhabited” Singapore 2016. Her works are witnesses of the times. The artist believes that the desperate struggle to exist is reflected in the behaviour and origins of a people. Thuy expresses the anguish of the desperate, trampled and forgotten. The social, environmental and cultural neglect and exploitation that leave only mute echoes.

Exhibition “Happy Ever After” 

06 Jan – 20 Mar 2024
Floor 2, Mipec Long Bien, No. 2 Long Biên 2, Ngọc Lâm, Long Biên, Hà Nội

Wishing hundred years of happiness for newlyweds on their wedding day expresses Vietnamese people’s sincere desire for a lifetime of joy and fullfillment. What is happiness? What does it take to make us happy? These seemingly simple questions are hard to answer, since each person’s idea of happiness is conditioned by a different life journey.

Through the practice of art using traditional lacquer materials and experiments with different modern materials such as metals and synthetics, the limits of materials expand to change forms and spatial dimensions. These new techniques offer a visually rich experience, creating new emotional expressions and artistic concepts.

In this exhibition, I continue to develop the art project “A Thousand Portraits of Mattresses”, a fusion of sculpture and painting that I’ve been pursuing for the past 10 years and will continue to do so in the future. Displaying mattress artworks alongside traditional paintings of people, landscapes, and objects, I want to invite reflections of life and its essence, of past and present, of time and space, while embracing dreams and realities that humans bear.

The exhibition is not my definition of happiness but merely my observations and reflections of life through the lines, forms, and colors. It is my own searching as an artist of the essence of art, of beauty and grit, of happiness and suffering, and ultimately, the meaning of life.

Duyên

27 – 31 Jan 2024
cafe bar Mùa, 1B Lê Phụng Hiểu, Hà Nội

An interactive exhibit on the untranslatable & inescapable Vietnamese concept of Duyên.

Two people (strangers, friends, or lovers) are invited to participate in the exhibit at a time. You’ll be able to read the story behind the exhibit, interact with the artwork, then sit sipping tea & talk about life.

For those curious, here’s an explanation of the word “Duyên is one of the concepts based on the Buddhist teaching of predestined happenings. The word is often used to describe the romantic pairing of individuals. Many roughly compare the word to fate, and it may be true to some extent that everyone we meet is presented by forces beyond our control. However, duyên is slightly different from fate as the Vietnamese often relate the concept to past lives. Whether it’s có duyên với nhau (which means they are predestined for each other) or lỡ duyên (they are not meant for each other), many believe that duyên is tied up with your past lives.”

Exhibition “The Middle Land”

Opening: 05 pm, Tues 30 Jan 2024
Exhibition: 09:30 am – 05 pm, 30 Jan – 20 Apr 2024
Artigin Art Space – Lotte Mall Westlake Office Lobby
683 Lac Long Quan, Tay Ho, Hanoi

A territory residing “in the middle.” Amidst the past, amidst the future. Between the edges of the tangible and the boundless. What we once understood about the contemporary realm now materializes as sudden occurrences, seemingly sensible yet rich in anomalies. A familiar obsession, seemingly empty and lacking in information.

This is where entities and events are no longer confined by nothingness, time, gradually evolving into mutated, distorted beings—creatures of the dream realm. They soar, transform, challenge each other.
They play, dance, conspire, tear each other apart in that condensed timeframe. They are mischievous, carefree in a manner that mocks the ordinary. They are unbound.
They are indifferent, attempting to cling to the old ego eroded and hollowed out by “The Middle Land”
What are they?
They are creatures from the restricted border area, flying like “chaotic locusts” through the spacetime of Lê Đăng Ninh.
They constitute an exhilarating virtual world filled with creatures, events that surpass the common sense of Đinh Quang Hải.
They embody the absurdly carefree, inexplicably innocent, and intriguingly mischievous narratives of Phạm Thái Bình within the highland stories.
They embody the silent, abundant yet wordless nature of Nguyễn Ngọc Liêm. Spacious, vast, gentle yet haunting. Familiar yet full of unfamiliar insecurities.
“The Middle Land” – month lost, year unknown.

At The Intersection: A Book Showcase From The Netherlands

07 am – 07 pm, 15 Jan – 15 Feb 2024
Matca Space for Photography, 48 Ngoc Ha, Ba Dinh, Hanoi

After the first iteration in Da Nang, the traveling exhibition “At The Intersection: A Book Showcase From The Netherlands” will make its next stop at Matca Space for Photography from 15.01. The titles on display were curated in collaboration with The Eriskay Connection, a studio for book design and publishing house focused on contemporary storytelling at the intersection of photography, research, and writing in order to provide new and necessary insights into the world around us.

The 18 showcased publications had travelled a great distance to reach Vietnam, conveying a diverse range of topics such as: The landscape of maritime transports in the Netherlands as sketched from personal interests in “I’m Looking for a Ship”, looking for clues of women’s contributions in modern nuclear and computer science through “Klara And The Bomb”, reflection on the contradictory symbiotic relationship between humans and domestic animals in “Horse and Novogen”, personal experiences under a population policy in “The Land Of Promises” or witty satire on a failed experiment that troubled the scientific community from “The Speed Of Light”.

The authors demonstrated multi-dimensional, multi-linear perspectives when standing at the intersection of past, future, and present. The usage of alternative visual materials such as archival images, topographic maps, scientific documents, or images from family albums demonstrated efforts in diversifying storytelling strategies within the domains of photography and printed matter.

The showcase is supported by the Embassy of the

Studio visit NáSA: Love is in the Air

02 – 07 Feb 2024
Á Space
Lane 215 Ngô Gia Tự, Long Biên district, Hà Nội

The open studio ‘Love is in the AiR’ is NáSA astronaut team’s launching finale. This experimental art project is initiated and coordinated by artist Nguyen Vu Tru and curator Nguyen Hai Hoa, featuring the creative talents of Doan Thi Dung, Nguyen Tra Giang, Viet-Hoang Pham, Thach Hieu, Kochi Kocha, Luu Chi Kien, Nguyen Do Duc Minh, Van-Nhi Nguyen, Tran Huyen Diem Phuong, and QuaDuong (Quang Quang).

‘Love is in the AiR’ is the brainchild of 10 astronauts on 5 missions to explore the sweet spot where love and art collide. The spatial and visual pluralism represent the amalgamating personalities of the astronauts, as each of them expands their practice based on motifs proposed by Nguyen Vu Tru.

’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.

Exhibition “Yet To Be Named”

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.

”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”