KVT is all wrapped up in a scarf

FRIDAY SUBLIME
WHAT A WEEK…Tuesday was Golden, Thursday Elegant and Friday SUBLIME!

At Nha San Duc Khymer artist Bopha Xorigia Le Huy Hoang showed us his really sublime Khymer scarf. Sublime because it was impressive and inspired awe. Also sublime because it was a wet, rainy night and the mediums the author used – coffee and sugar – accidentally began to dissolve and meld.

At any exhibition the viewer has to be struck by the beauty or the sensual impact of the artists work before they take on board any philosophical or intellectual statements about it. The Scarf, a huge floor installation figuratively representing a checked scarf commonly worn by Cambodian and Khymer rural people (and a favorite tourist souvenir) is stunning. It is constructed of squares of Vietnamese coffee grounds and squares of Cambodian and Vietnamese sugar on a white ground. The fringes at each end are in coffee grounds of different shades and threads of white sugar. Pristine, as the artist intended it to be, it was outstanding, but with the dampness and teeny rivulets on the stilt house floor a sublime sublimation took place and with the dissolving of the mediums in parts of the installation it took on the look of a well worn, well loved piece of apparel and if you go and see it in the next few days you’ll notice an even more intense sublimation. I only hope that the artist is making a photographic of the metamorphosis.  The 40ish artist is Cambodian on his fathers side and his mother Vietnamese. His family and his personal history is part of the Pol Pot atrocities and the Vietnamese liberation. He was a soldier on Cambodian battlefields.

He says that the Scarf is part of the telling of his story. It’s a mixture of his soul and the instabilities of his everyday life. And as the actual scarf dissolves, melds, dries out, solidifies, drifts in breezes it adds a real intensity to the artist’s poignant statement. He says that the sugars from the two countries are used to symbolise the the cultures of the two countries “still running sweetly inside me”and after the rain the symbolism is lovely.

Try and get out into the suburbs to Nha San Studio to see the Scarf. You’ll be as amazed and moved as I was, and am.

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It was not such a sublime rush from Nha San through rain, deep puddles and a final torrential downpour to the Opera House to catch the four members of Stradivaria with Mozart, but it was worth every sodden moment to hear really sublime playing.

Sometimes you listen to live music and it is like having magical earphones attached to a brilliant sound system….totally sublime. And Stradivaria were awesome. Mozart has rarely sounded so good.

L’Espace brought them to us as part of the European celebrations sparkling all around us, and what a sublime thing to do. At only 100,000 VND for the best seats, how lucky can we be?

I’ve said it again and I’ll keep saying it……where but in Hanoi!!!!