#SoloMarathon2020 – Open Studio 01: The White Sand In Exile
Openday: Fri 26 June 2020, 03 pm – 10 pm
Open Studio will close at 9 pm, Sat 27 June 2020
Artist’s talk by Xuan Ha: 15:00 – 18:00, Thứ bảy 27/06/2020
Á Space – Experimental Arts
59 Ngô Gia Tự (turn right at the end of the alley then go straight for 500m), Hà Nội
From the organizer:
This June, Á Space would like to invite all friends and audiences to the open studio of #SoloMarathon2020 No 01 – by Xuan Ha
“White sand spreads across the seaside communes. Houses are built on sand. Trees are planted on sand. The tourism industry is built on sand. People’s graveyards are built on sand.” These concise sentences successfully imitate the direct effects humans have towards nature on the same piece of land. The open studio is the first step of Xuan Ha’s adventure – an emotional series of expeditions to find her home – a journey of working alternately between personal experiences and external materials, between the variant that only exists in memory and the confronted reality.
Departed from the delicate thrill of emotions while facing the graveyard amongst the white sand, Xuan Ha closely approached the business of extracting and mining sand in her hometown (Thang Binh, Quang Nam) – with the intent to produce glass and export to developed countries. Through that, she reflected its direct/indirect impacts on the physical and emotional wellbeing of the locals. Wandering and picking up the glass bottles that drifted to the shore from various sources, but all stuck in the same area; the artist imagined a story that seemed almost fictional but possible of a rigorous journey of returning home. After all, the doctrine of extract/ consumerism spreads across the seaside communes, the “doctrines” are built on sand, planted on sand and buried under the sand. The idea “The White Sand In Exile” originates from the culture of people that live in the Central, those that have attached their life with the sand, those who would carry sand from the small sand in the creak of their sandals to the sandy white pile of incense ash on the altar. Here, the spiritual door for both worlds holds a nonrenewable natural resource.
The series of art pieces focus on experimenting with materials, transforming both the forms and ideas of the glass bottles that Xuan Ha collected. Carrying the echoed harmony of a partially fictional journey, she allows the viewers to infiltrate/ extract from a personal perspective to a public one through the use of exhibition space as well as personal one during her stay as a residential artist. By arranging the scattering and spreading of the art pieces, she intends to recreate the sceneries that were witnessed, the cluttering glass bottles lying across the wet shore, directing us to repatriate towards the land of our own thoughts and imagination.
About the artist:
Xuân Hạ (b.1993, Da Nang), is a visual and multimedia artist. She has been an active practitioner in the local art community since the end of 2015, when she co-founded the art collective Chaosdowntown Cháo in Saigon. Since September 2019, she lives and works in Da Nang and co-founded “a sông collective” in the hope of learning and understanding more about her homeland.
In her most recent works, Xuân Hạ shares her thoughts on the direct/indirect impact that civilization has on Millennials and their behaviors, especially those in Vietnam. Through methods of experimenting with space, everyday-life objects and moving pictures, she proposed fictional plays made of clashing pieces, gradually forming themselves into stories. Her work is a documentative collection that mostly embark on her relationship between herself and the transformation of the environment.
Xuan Ha participated in the Residency Programme for Young Artists, FUTUR Foundation, Rapperswil-Jona, Switzerland, 2019; ACC Arts Space Network Residency Program hosted by the Asia Culture Center (ACC) in Gwangju, Korea and “FAMLAB: Film, Archive and Music Lab” in Gia Lai, Ninh Thuan, organized by the British Council, Vietnam, 2018. Xuan Ha’s recent solo exhibitions include “There’s an ant inside my glass of water,” Chaosdowntown Cháo, Vietnam (2018) as part of the Asian In/Visible Station project series co-organized by the Japan Foundation Asia Center and co-curated by ZeroStation, and “How I miss the taste of tangerine,” Sàn Art, Vietnam (2019).
Follow updates on event’s page.
