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- Hanoi 1985 - 2015, In The Years Of Forgetting
William Crawforda photography exhibition by American photographer William Crawford Hanoi 1985 - 2015, In The Years Of Forgetting - May 20, 2023 April 26, 2023 William Crawford 18 street life photos taken from 1985-2015 by William Crawford. William Crawford was one of the first photographers to gain access to postwar Vietnam in 1985 and he continued to return at regular intervals for a period of thirty years. As an American witnessing the devastation and sorrow of war he was compelled to show the humanity that coexists with deep suffering. Sensitive to the subtle nuances of everyday life and the customs of the people in this exotic land, he documented the life of the Vietnamese as it evolved over three decades. The artist became entranced with the streets of the old quarter in Hanoi which revealed all manner of arts and crafts and the traditional lifestyles of the Vietnamese. Revisiting the same sites repeatedly gave the artist entrée into intimate moments in time as the country shifted from a post war mentality struggling to advance to a thriving metropolis emerging as a model for economic growth in SE Asia. As he worked over the years the photographer formed friendships with the local people as they went about their daily lives. With the years passing over 3 decades, his photos became a diary of one man’s efforts to reconcile with the past and heal the wounds of war with the simple humanity of acknowledging the dignity of the human spirit. Tender intimate moments in life, a bodybuilder toning his physique, young men sharing confidences over a cup of tea, the beauty of a dedicated altar honoring all that came before, become testimony to the strength of the human spirit and the ability to overcome great adversity with compassion, love, and insight. All of the photos were shot on film which also highlights the transition of a time-honored medium that makes way for the digital age, just as the landscape of the city itself must make way and yield to the current times. Suzanne Lecht ARTWORKS GALLERY OPENING NIGHT See more about artist(s)
- NET-KID show /nākid/
Nguyễn Uyên Minh Nguyễn Vương Phương Thảo Cao Hoàng LongOpening act of 'Saigon Invasion' 29.10 - 02.11.2016 NET-KID show /nākid/ - November 2, 2016 October 29, 2016 Nguyễn Uyên Minh Nguyễn Vương Phương Thảo Cao Hoàng Long Coming from the land of sun and rain, NET-KID show which was officially launched at Ga0-Zerostation (Ho Chi Minh City) in early 2016, “hijack” Manzi for a week as the opening act for our initiative “Saigon Invasion” - a series of presentations aiming to showcase the creative landscape of Ho Chi Minh City through the lenses and practices of Saigon-based art collectives. NET-KID is not just an art exhibition nor performance. NET-KID is about having a good time, and creating a space for people to strip off their identities and enjoy the now. NET-KID is mischievously mispronounced from "naked", and embodies the wild and free spirits of the enfants rebelles of the art world. Two emerging Saigon-based photographers Nguyễn Uyên Minh and Nguyễn Vương Phương Thảo (Thảo.intherain) will lead you into their worlds, and use the camera to capture you at your barest, both physically and emotionally. Two separate installation art pieces/studio spaces will be set up, and you are welcome to come join, get drunk and "strip it all off" with the artists. Additionally, “Saturn at your feet” - a site-specific light installation by Cao Hoàng Long, in collaboration with Uyên Minh and Phương, will let you discover another dimension of NET-KID’s cosmic love. Come, bare (feet) it all, enjoy the stars and the sky with us! “We - as those who seek an escape from ourselves - seek not a narrative from you. In return, hopefully, you too won’t have any fixed conception or expectations from us. Let go of your body and mind, and become a part of the now.” - NET-KID Artists: Nguyễn Uyên Minh, Nguyễn Vương Phương Thảo, Cao Hoàng Long Curator: Xuân Hà Assistant curator: Thanh (Nu) Mai Producer: Đăng Bùi *This event is part of Manzi’s art programme supported by CDEF of the Danish Embassy ARTWORKS GALLERY OPENING NIGHT See more about artist(s)
- Catching Faces
Nguyễn Như Huyopen studio by Nguyễn Như Huy | curated by Nobuo Takamori Catching Faces - November 2, 2025 October 4, 2025 Nguyễn Như Huy CURATORIAL ESSAY In his works, Nguyen Nhu Huy demonstrates both wit and humor. We can see how, in his transition from curator/philosopher to artist, his works carry a strong sense of thought made visible. For human perception, the face has always been a crucial element. Through the face we express emotions, and by observing the subtle movements of others’ faces, we receive the information they convey. Psychologists argue that the brain’s mirror neurons are essential to human social development: when we see someone laugh, it triggers unconscious mimicry in our own facial muscles, bringing us joy; similarly, watching someone cry can evoke empathy and compassion. The entertainment industry is a practitioner of mirror neurons, but different cultural contexts shape facial codes in distinct ways. In Asian film and television, crying has become an entertainment process in itself. Whether in soap operas, family dramas, comedies, or tragedies, actors often end up crying together, stirring emotional resonance in the audience. This is both a culture of crying and an entertainment of crying . Nguyen Nhu Huy precisely captures this cultural phenomenon, employing a Stephen Chow–style satire that compels us to confront face after face. Beyond the weeping actors, Face 01 , the artist also presents his own face in Face 02 , mechanically twisting as the toy cars moving disorderly under the silk screen on which the artist face is screened. This self-performative representation carries multiple layers of metaphor. Yet to me, it may also serve as a symbolic narrative of Homo sapiens evolving into Homo technicus . On one hand, globalization compels us to reimagine contemporary Asian narratives; on the other, as humans, we must continually renegotiate our place within new technologies. As media theorist Marshall McLuhan suggested, media and technological interfaces are extensions of the human body and organs. The face, being our foremost interface with the world, raises the question: how does this extension become a new mode of representation? Since the 2021 Asian Art Biennial , I have sought to examine the relationship between Asian futurism, contemporary Asia, and Asia’s past. I found that in techno-orientalism , technology is often overstated in Hollywood’s discourse, to the point that the human subject disappears. In contrast, Asian film and television exaggerate faces so overwhelmingly that technology seems to have no place in the human-centered world. Nguyen Nhu Huy’s artistic experiments expose the absurdity of this tension and weave it into a coherent structure. What is even more valuable is that the artist avoids lengthy polemics, instead engaging in a powerful dialectic through his images. Nobuo Takamori ARTWORKS GALLERY ARTWORK DESCRIPTION: Face No.1 Nguyen Nhu Huy’s Face 01 is an extraordinary single - channel video that foregrounds the face as both medium and cultural symbol. The work presents a series of actors—among them the celebrated Vietnamese actress Như Quỳnh—each revealing nothing but their faces while enacting the act of crying. What emerges is not simply a study of performance, but an exploration of crying as a gesture that exceeds its own action. In the context of Asian television drama, crying has long been codified as a core element of entertainment, a calculated means of eliciting audience response. Here, however, it is reconfigured into an assemblage that is at once abstract and satirical: abstract, in its stripping away of narrative to isolate a pure affective sign; satirical, in its reflection on and critique of the melodramatic conventions of Asian storytelling. By focusing the faces in this way, Nguyen underscores its role as a cultural vessel—an interface where emotion, identity, and social expectation converge. Yet precisely because of this cultural weight, the face is also revealed to be less a site of authentic expression than a surface transformed into symbol, abstracted from the very emotions it purports to convey. ========= Face No.2 Building upon his sustained engagement with the motif of the face, Nguyen Nhu Huy’s Face 02 turns inward, using his own face as the work’s central material. The artist projects his face onto a fabric screen, which becomes a thin interfaceto manipulation by toy cars moving behind it. As these small machines traverse the surface, the projected features are pressed, warped, and reshaped—transforming the artist’s face into an unstable image. At moments, it takes on the comic exaggeration of a clown; at others, it recalls the convulsions of an involuntary spasm, hovering between humor and unease. This dynamic of distortion resonates with the tradition of Stephen Chow’s comedies, in which pain and comedy coexist within a single gesture. But in Nguyen’s work, the scene is not only playful video. It became a metaphor for the conditions of contemporary life, where the pressures of technological innovation and industrial transformation bend and reconfigure both human identity and the artist’s own position within society. Face 02 thus stages a complex interplay: the mechanical and the human, the humorous and the agonizing, the personal and the collective. The work renders the face as neither a stable surface of selfhood nor a transparent index of emotion, but as a site of continual negotiation—caught between embodiment and abstraction, agency and subjection. In doing so, Nguyen extends his inquiry into the face as a cultural vessel, revealing its fragility and its capacity to mirror broader shifts in the world around it. OPENING NIGHT See more about artist(s)
- Another Crossing
Bảo VươngA solo exhibition by BẢO VƯƠNG 07.06 - 05.07.2019 Another Crossing - July 5, 2019 June 7, 2019 Bảo Vương ‘ANOTHER CROSSING' by visual artist Bao Vuong features his latest series of paintings and a durational performance. Born in Vietnam by the end of the 1970's, Bao Vuong's family fled from Vietnam when he was one year old on a boat like thousands of boat people leaving the country in this period of time. The series of paintings in ANOTHER CROSSING is a projection of the nights in the open seas spent out by his family on the run, the same nights that hundreds of thousands of refugees have lived through the centuries and still know each day. Forsaken in the dark, without no a clue. Darkness increases imminent death and swallows those that have sacrificed and lost everything worth living. Black paint awakens fears associated with the exile, while reflections of light on the paint strokes represent shimmers of hope that give birth to a survival instinct, echoing the promise for a better world. The performance piece by Bao Vuong in the exhibition entitled "Nước"/Water is a creation of a graphic work in situ, which started on the first day of the exhibition and ended four days later. Five days locked, deprived of contact, without food, relying only on the goodwill of the sky to hydrate. The whole performance was broadcasted live on Manzi's Facebook page. ARTWORKS GALLERY “Huge is the night that governs us. It weighs on our hearts at dusk, when the shadows lengthen. It's not always easy to have Vietnam as a legacy.” 1. “The Crossing VII” --- I wonder how far you have to relive the drama to exorcise it. Bao Vuong’s paintings of the series “THE CROSSING” are totally black. They are both realistic and abstract. The conductive thread of this series is a projection of a trauma, a projection of the nights in the open seas spent by his family on the run, the same nights that hundreds of thousands of refugees have lived by the past and are still living in different parts of the world. Here in “The Crossing VII”,the infinite black sky meets the immensity of the sea. The shipwrecked man feels even more lost and humble before such a spectacle, he is invaded by an unspeakable feeling of loneliness. 2. Series of 4 oils paintings entitled “The Crossing XIII” – “Night 1 – 4” "The Crossing XIII - Đêm" is a projection of the artist’s traumatic story. 4 paintings for the 4 nights at sea. Texture of the paintings is sometimes fluid, sometimes dry and rough. The frozen waves are like a bad scar that does not want to be healed and is still itchy. 3. The Crossing XII --- One day there is a crossing. A boat launched on the sea to escape the unspeakable. For those who are fleeing, there are no words. There is a deep wound: that of having to leave everything. That of facing unknown immensities at the risk of their lives. And then there are months of wandering, from camps to camps. The ocean is an impassable gulf. A dark place where the dead disappear without tombs. An abyss of ghosts. Similar to other paintings of “THE CROSSING” series, the artist used black oil paint and completed with a handmade knife work. However, here the sea is smooth and the waves seem like boats: thousands of waves, thousands of boats, and eventually thousands of souls. Those waves of boats are sailing to an unidentified dream but a new promise of life. Each "wave boat" is made with a single, strong stroke of a knife. They are like the decision to leave, radical and definitive. Like a knife planted in the heart. 4. “Untitled” ---I wonder how far you have to play with death to finally learn to live, to breathe normally Here is a basic pencil drawing on paper. It represents the sea, the horizon and the sky. However, during the creative process, a hole was made in the middle of the drawing and we can see through. This drawing is placed between two pieces of very thin transparent glass. The drawing and the two transparent pieces are suspended in the air, attached by a set of black adhesive tape, two transparent fishing wires connect the installation with the ceiling. Any light breeze or any movement of visitors would make this installation swing. The work looks so fragile as if it is going to fall down; this fragility may give visitors a feeling of discomfort. --- How many shipwrecks have fallen and drowned in the immensity of the water, who will never reach their destination ... 5. Performance “Nước “ 5 days – 4 nights from the 07/06/19 7pm to 11/06/19 6.30pm Bao Vuong's performance is entitled "Nước" : a creation of a graphic work in situ, which starts on the first day of the exhibition and ends 4 days later. Almost 5 days locked and deprived of contact, without food, relying only on the goodwill of the sky to hydrate. It will be a kind of long invocation, an ultimate test, to remember, to be closer to the memory of his parents, and the two hundred people with whom they shared a boat, of their suffering, those of all the boatpeople and all the migrants. It is for him a necessity, an extreme act to understand, to relive and to question, to create. I asked my mother what state of mind she was on the boat at that time. She said she was not scared or sad. She couldn’t think of anything. She was just thirsty. My first word as a child I pronounced, it was on the boat. This first word was « nước » (water) Because our eyes have not cried, because our hearts did not give up, because they escaped that hell, I carry their destiny in me. “As a witness, a smuggler of memory, as an artist, I speak for those who cannot speak, those who have no voice or words to say the unspeakable, to say what is buried in them. Like someone who is a novelist, director or lecturer, I tell by visual art, my story, that of my family, that of thousands and thousands torn people. But it is also an endless journey, that of migrants throughout the world. Since 2014, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has recorded nearly 17,000 deaths and missing in the Mediterranean, including 5773 migrants whose bodies were found. The problems of borders and exile will be even more central issues in the near future with global warming and the displacement of thousands or even millions of people who will be deprived of agrarian land or whose places of life have been invaded by waters. This performance is for me a moment of spiritual retreat, a cut off from daily reality. It is an artistic meditative act; I create a work that consists of lines more or less straight. A visual Buddhist "ohm" in a refound silence. This performance is finally an act of ecological commitment. Our society is a society of excessive consumption; the having is more glorified than the being. Hyperconsumption becomes a duty and in the end a permanent dissatisfaction. While by this artistic gesture, that is a non gesture, I show that it is totally possible to live with nothing.” - Bảo Vương (Hanoi, June 2019) OPENING NIGHT See more about artist(s)
- The Desiring Garden
Jamie Maxtone-GrahamPhotography by JAMIE MAXTONE - GRAHAM 30.03 - 30.04.2013 The Desiring Garden - April 30, 2013 March 30, 2013 Jamie Maxtone-Graham The photography exhibition ‘The Desiring Garden’ showcases a series of fascinating works by Jamie Maxtone-Graham, an American photographer based in Hanoi. Produced within intensely urban Hanoi, Vietnam, the images in The Desiring Garden are the record of a place that exists between the projected and the perceived. "The images in The Desiring Garden prey on the Western perception of the exotic; a Rousseau-like play on an environment – here, the urban center of Hanoi - in which certain indigenous species of plants, some items of human utility and sources of nourishment are presented together in some arrangement alongside people with an uncertain relationship to these objects. The physical view of the people inhabiting the frame, observed within these embellished environments, is that of an outsider; of one who looks upon the scene - but not in - and, in turn, is unnoticed." ARTWORKS GALLERY OPENING NIGHT See more about artist(s)
- manzi art space |Mở xưởng - Open studio - More-than-human
Located in centre of Hanoi, Manzi is known as one of the most dynamic art spaces in South East Asia. Through art exhibitions, talks, workshops, book introductions, movie screenings, music and dance performances, Manzi's mission is to promote contemporary arts, build new audiences, inspire critical thinking and nurture VUI LÒNG CHỌN NGÔN NGỮ Tiếng Việt CHOOSE THE LANGUAGE English
- manzi art space |Eng - more than human details
Located in centre of Hanoi, Manzi is known as one of the most dynamic art spaces in South East Asia. Through art exhibitions, talks, workshops, book introductions, movie screenings, music and dance performances, Manzi's mission is to promote contemporary arts, build new audiences, inspire critical thinking and nurture A site-specific staging by Nguyễn Huy An - Lại Diệu Hà - Nguyễn Trần Nam - Nguyễn Văn Phúc - Nguyễn Trinh Thi - Nguyễn Văn Thủy Open studio: 11.00 AM - 07.00 PM (Wed - Sun) from 23 Feb until 19 Mar 2023 Venues: the front yard of manzi art space - 14 Phan Huy Ích, Ba Đình, Hà Nội & manzi exhibition space - no.2 ngõ Hàng Bún, Ba Đình, Hà Nội There is Light and Darkness Sound and Silence Natural beings and Man-made Objects Remembrance of things past Promise of things that just begin There are Handcrafts along Machines The Original and Imitation Materiality and Dematerialization Flesh and Spirit Divine and Earthly Then Decaying… ...Continue reading Description A shoe A ladder A lightning strike Malevich Hydra The Sound Hòn non bộ (miniature landscape art) A fleeting outline scribbled down, that outline of a Story not yet to be fully-formed just awaiting to be unveiled, but rather of the happenings to be encountered and recorded. Throughout over three weeks, six artists (working in different disciplines: visual arts, performance art, sound & moving images) will collaborate together in a series of “symbiotic experiments”, an open studio simultaneously at two different spaces of manzi. Provoked by an infinite conundrum about More-Than-Human World, ‘The Understories’ simulates a site-specific staging in which many elements/characters would be involved; they can appear suddenly or quietly withdraw, with unexpected movements and mise en scène: A four - rhythm open studio Experimenting with both space and time, 'More than human #1: The Understories ' is not an inert installations. Rather, week after week, the displayed works will transform through four 'Phases' (or we can call them ‘ Rh ythms’ as in Biology / ' Acts’ as in a Play/ ‘Chapters’ as in a Story), Transient & Moving... Each part only lasts for 4 - 5 days Rhythm #4 02.00 PM 15 Mar - 07.00 PM 19 Mar SHOW'S DIAGRAM CURRENTLY ON STAGE
- (E)MOTION
Knee JerkA showcase of stencil art by KNEE JERK 25.09 - 07.10.2013 (E)MOTION - October 7, 2013 September 25, 2013 Knee Jerk Knee Jerk is a graphic designer, illustrator and stencil artist currently residing in Hanoi. His colourful work ranges from abstract to realistic, minimalist to high detail and anywhere in between. Usually, his designs begin in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and end up as large multilayer stencils that are painstakingly cut by hand before being sprayed onto canvases, walls and other objects. The focus for the (E)Motion exhibition at Manzi is a series of anomalous motion illusions and other optical art pieces that will make you wonder if you are seeing things or if in reality it is the artwork that is itself moving! As with all of Knee Jerk's work there is a social and environmental commentary within the pieces and rather than having a knee jerk (automatic) reaction to the work, the artist urges you to think about the art and its context to understand more fully the juxtaposition of geometric beauty and hidden meanings. This is the artist's first solo show and features a new body of work that promises to deliver a fresh taste of something you probably haven't seen before - Artwork that appears to move in some way, in what is the first gallery exhibition of stencil art in Vietnam's history. ARTWORKS GALLERY OPENING NIGHT See more about artist(s)
- CONSCIOUSNESS
Trịnh CungA solo exhibition by TRỊNH CUNG 12.01 - 20.01. 2015 CONSCIOUSNESS - January 20, 2015 January 12, 2015 Trịnh Cung ‘Consciousness’ featuring Trinh Cung's latest creations with 9 sketches and 7 large size oil paintings will mark the return of one of the most important artists of Saigon before 1975 after more than 20 years long of absence in the local art scene. ‘I haven’t shown my work to public for a long time as I felt depressed with everything I created, so I wrapped them up, locked them in a tube, brought them along with me with the hope to find a heaven, for me and for them. Now at the age of 77, I have realised that my artwork need to be free, they need to be alive and that’s why they are here, at manzi art space today’ - Trinh Cung. By setting up an ambiguous interplay between foreground and background, transforming his canvas into a composition of loose, organic forms, in this series of work, Trinh Cung has created a perpetual motion, candidly confronting themes of identity, sexuality and the fear of loss and abandonment. ARTWORKS GALLERY OPENING NIGHT See more about artist(s)
- Through the looking glass
Nguyễn Trần Nama solo show by Nguyễn Trần Nam Through the looking glass - April 9, 2022 March 16, 2022 Nguyễn Trần Nam Known as one of Hanoi’s second wave of contemporary artists, Nam’s practice embraces a diverse body of multimedia works such as paintings, installations and video art. ‘Through the looking glass’ is the artist’s third solo exhibition with Manzi, following ‘Undone’ in 2017 and 'The broken chapters' in 2013. Consisting of a stop motion film, a few sketches and a series of found objects, the exhibition questions the relationship between human belief, power and violence, and between loss and oblivion. In the works on display at Manzi, the film – the only moving element of the exhibition – is composed of pure fantasies and unreal chronicles, like an aimless journey through an unknown tunnel with various exits, leaving us disoriented in the shattered imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of faith and violence, a phantasmagoric hybrid between ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and Dante's ‘Inferno’. In here and out there, or out here and in over there. The hand drawn pictures – frozen moments – have now been endowed with movement through a stop motion technique and have come to life in the form of an animation which is ultimately just another kind of freezing over. The other parts of the exhibition feature left-over elements that were used in constructing the film and its motions. Paper sheets reveal the figures and traces of the drawing process; Bone fragments collected by chance around the walls of Huế Citadel now turn into a poem arranged with the dense areas and white spaces of a written composition or a painting; evoking undeciphered ancient writings, the poem seems to be whispering the lost tales of extinct civilizations; The Landolt C chart, developed by the Swiss-born ophthalmologist Edmund Landolt for vision testing, can readily be found in any ophthalmology clinic in Vietnam; The Katuk plant blends the artist’s own memories of his childhood garden with Andersen’s fairy tales ‘The Rose Elf’ and ‘Under the Willow tree’; Soil and sickles are found objects from the artist’s hometown, intimately associated with personal loss – soil collected on a field that the artist has never cultivated and sickles that are just blades without handles that have never been used. Side by side, these two elements are reflections of each other in different dimensions. Creating a parallel world unbound by truth, time or place, ‘Through the looking glass’ can be seen as a change in Nguyễn Trần Nam’s artistic practice, leading to a new phase in his creative path. The show will commence on 16 March and will be on display until 09 April 2022. Notes for visitors: Due to the fragility of the installation and the complexity of the set up, we can only accommodate max 10 persons for each slot. In light of the current coronavirus developments, please wear mask when visiting, scan QR code and use the hand sanitizer provided at our door. 'Through the looking glass' is part of Manzi art programme supported by the Goethe Institut ARTWORKS GALLERY OPENING NIGHT See more about artist(s)
- 47 Days, Sound-less
Nguyễn Trinh Thia sound & video installation by Nguyen Trinh Thi 47 Days, Sound-less - November 24, 2024 October 22, 2024 Nguyễn Trinh Thi 47 Days, Sound-less | A version for Hanoi 22.10 - 24.11.2024 11.00 AM - 07.00 PM (Tue - Sun) Manzi Exhibition Space, 2 ngõ Hàng Bún, Ba Đình, Hà Nội Free Entrance Deep in a wild forest, a man was wandering, he was stranded with no recollection or clues about his past. The village of indigenous people living there took him in… Adopting such an open fictional structure, Trinh Thi’s installation weaves together sound, moving images and texts from various sources, creating a space with more intuitive cues conducive to multi-sensory experiences beyond just seeing / watching/ reading. The visual elements of ‘47 Days, Sound-less' are derived from existing footage: cutout images of natural landscapes used as backdrops and uncredited local natives used as extras in Hollywood and Vietnamese movies, interspersed with Trinh Thi’s own recordings of the Jarai people from Vietnam’s Central Highlands. These re-constructed, re-contextualized imageries are framed within the textual fragmented narration based on Ursula K. Le Guin's science fiction stories. ‘47 Days, Sound-less’ challenges the conventional idea of visuality and overturns the standard hierarchy in modes of sensing and perceiving, which ultimately determine which reality is present and central. Foregrounding what used to be in the background and the consequent ambiguity—in both what to see & what to know (as the pieced-together visuals are mostly abstract and grainy, while the story structure is loose and unclear with many missing details)—allows for a space to re-attune our senses. In such a context of departure from a logically-based and visually-oriented norm, the formlessness and invisibility of sound prevail. With the echoing and all-encompassing power, sound shapes a new order, one centered on hearing and listening. Using real sonic materials of nature combined with tunes produced by traditional indigenous musical instruments imitating the sounds of the forest, this installation questions the visual dominance in our modern perception and knowledge construction, as well as provokes reflections on boundaries and ecology, and reveals a non-human-centered perspective. ‘47 Days, Sound-less' also proposes a new method to see and experience the moving image as an installation, a type of ‘expanded cinema’. Utilizing a system of mirrors that reflect the fragments of footage onto diverse directions in space, Trinh Thi explores the idea of peripheries by deliberately disrupting the central line of sight, thus expanding our visual field to what is hidden or out of sight. This attempt does not undermine the power of seeing but highlights the often overlooked limitation and deficit of it. Our sensory abilities are inherently flawed and restricted, whereas the possibilities of existence are indefinite and boundless. There always exists ‘the unknown, the invisible and the inaccessible' —an alternate/parallel reality, a more-than-human world. The work is commissioned by the Han Nefkens Foundation, Mori Art Museum, M+ Hong Kong and Singapore Art Museum ARTWORKS GALLERY 47 Days, Sound-less 2024 Video, three screens and mirror Video: three-channel projection, 16:9, 16:9 and 5:2 aspect ratios, black & white & color, sound (stereo), 30 mins With texts extracted and adapted from: ‘City of Illusions’ - Ursula K. Le Guin (1967) ‘Vaster than Empires and More Slow’ - Ursula K. Le Guin (1971) ‘The Word for World is Forest’ - Ursula K. Le Guin (1972) Sound and video extracted and sampled from: Chung một dòng sông (1959) Vợ chồng A Phủ (1961) Vĩ tuyến 17 Ngày và Đêm (1972) Bài ca ra trận (1973) Deer Hunter (1978) Apocalypse Now (1979) Platoon (1986) Hamburger Hill (1987) Casualties of War (1989) Dien Bien Phu (1992) Rescue Dawn (2006) Rừng Đen (2008) Footage by Jamie Maxtone-Graham & Tạ Minh Đức, Field recordings by Nguyễn Trinh Thi Sound recordings of “And They Die a Natural Death” (Nguyễn Trinh Thi, 2022) “Sound-Less” (Nguyễn Trinh Thi, 2023) Vietnamese translation by Nguyễn Hoàng Thiên Ngân & Nguyễn Trinh Thi _____________________ >>> Exhibition Catalogue for 47 Days, Sound-less presented at the Singapore Art Museum (12 January–14 April 2024) READ HERE OPENING NIGHT See more about artist(s)
- Water Flows Rock Erodes
Sto LenOpen Studio by STO LEN 01.10 - 21.10.2016 Water Flows Rock Erodes - October 21, 2016 October 1, 2016 Sto Len Titled 'Nước Chảy Đá Mòn', the open studio by print and performance artist Sto Len invites visitors to observe his practice, have a chat, get their own hands dirty and see his latest body of work produced both in Hanoi and New York. Sto captures (un)expected moments of beauty in the form of monoprints following Japanese Suminagashi (floating ink) marbling methods which he has tweaked over the last years to fit his own practice in which much is left to chance and the process of going with the flow and seeing what happens is an intangible aspect of the finished pieces. To create monoprints that will never be replicated in quite the same way, he prepares bodies of water from all kinds of sources, adds an assortment of paint and invites the surrounding space to add whatever speckles of dust, bugs or grit it can spare, lets all of it stew, waits, plays with the result, might wait some more and eventually places a piece of paper on the resulting surface to visually capture the collaboration of the artist with whatever space he is producing in. Just as memories are given meaning in hindsight, Sto checks in with what he has picked out of the water to see what his catch of the day is and decide whether it was what he was hoping for. In Vietnam Sto will be continuing his recent body of work of printing on old maps and posters - a ‘collaboration’ that unsettles the seeming rigidity and authority of cartography and official information. He will also be producing his ‘natural waste’ prints - having realised that he can employ his printing technique in the soiled waterways of New York he has been experimenting with pulling prints of poisonous beauty out of them and is looking to do the same in the many bodies of water in Hanoi and it’s surrounding Visitors are invited to experience his creative process fully and to return multiple times to witness the body of work grow and see what worked and what didn’t. *The Vietnamese proverb “Nuoc Chay Da Mon”, which directly translates to “Water Flows Rock Erodes”, is employed both to encourage patience and a reminder that change is gradual, inevitable and happens through consistency upheld over a long period of time. ARTWORKS GALLERY OPENING NIGHT See more about artist(s)









