KVT musing on a fine and sunny Tuesday
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Emergency Room continues
The Emergency Room seems to be running out of steam, grinding to a halt as it becomes its own emergency in need of CPR and mouth to mouth resuscitation. I went on Sunday and found that there hadn’t been an emergency worth commenting on since the previous Thursday. In fact a printed T-shirt on display in the museum section said it all… NOTHING.
Today the few topical displays were worth seeing and Na Son’s dramatic piece about a bloody street beating was effective and seemed to grasp the ethos of the Emergency Room Project. So much of the work on offer skirts comment on yesterday’s current events and proffers social or environmental issues. Le Dung had a great one on males and violent computer and online games. My Ngoc made an effective photographic comment about animals alcoholically preserved in jars of rice wine for priapically challenged males.
I am crossing my fingers that the project can regain momentum because I really believe it’s a worthwhile and valuable challenge to artists. How they rise to the challenge and confront the project’s objectives while still weaving in and out of the labyrinth of societal mores and restrictions is the fascination for the casual viewer like me. I desperately hope that complacency and ennui don’t win.
Tu Ba at Module 7
Module 7 has a nice little collection on the walls of their delicious showrooms. I guess when you give an exhibition a title you are hoping to initially seduce the viewer. When I see Spirit of Vietnam my attention is grabbed, but this group show, as attractive as it is, needs a more apt name. The small prints by Virginie Faivre D’Acier are beguilingly beautiful as usual and worth a second look, especially the delicate, green rice paddies. Consuello Le Mire’s black and white photos are poetically atmospheric (as usual and as you expect from this intelligent artist). Her mosaic of small colored images on level one would suit a book format better. But then I am always at odds with photographers who want to be seen as art photographers because I feel that only super special images deserve a frame and wall space… unless it’s a photo essay or collection that inveigles you with its quirkiness or is part of an ephemeral installation… and I haven’t come across many this year that qualify.
My Le’s photographs are quite ok too and capture those tattooed walls that you see western tourists attempting to come to photographic grips with. Again, on pages of a tome they’d be effective.
Iranian Women at 29 Hang Bai
This is an interesting though static exhibition by a group of 40/50ish academic and establishment Iranian female artists. It’s a necessarily conservative body of work at $2000 + prices (though if you trawl through a lot of Hanoi’s galleries the price tags will seem miniscule).
Worthwhile seeing, if only from a feminist perspective.
Not a reviewer, not a critic, “Kiếm Văn Tìm” is an interested, impartial and informed observer and connoisseur of the Hanoi art scene who offers highly opinionated remarks and is part of the long and venerable tradition of anonymous correspondents. Please add your thoughts in the comment field below. |