Update About The 3 Works of Intothinair
From Manzi:
Update About The 3 Works of Intothinairr
01. ‘Off-road’ by Nguyễn Mạnh Hùng
2 Nui Truc, Kim Ma – in front of the Embassy of Sweden
This installation, made up of a real car and four composite turtle sculptures, makes the satire of the original illustration on which it is based more explicit. The animals replace the wheels of the car and are poised to head into different directions. If the sculpture were to come alive and the turtles started moving forward they would break the car they are a part of. The work explores the immense contradiction of working together when individual creatures with their own sense of direction try to work as one. Humans are such creatures. Made up of internal contradictions and with views opposing each other both small group work and 7 billion people inhabiting, sharing and moving on one planet seems impossible. The work is exhibited at a public intersection one of the spaces where this challenge plays out in traffic on a daily basis.
Nguyễn Mạnh Hùng
Nguyễn Mạnh Hùng is one of Vietnam’s most successful contemporary artists at home and abroad. He employs the realist painting training he received at the Fine Arts University in his hometown Hanoi and injects wit and satire to disguise poignant messages. His large-scale installations employ similar methods and are executed with meticulous attention to detail. As an active member of the avant-garde artists collective Nhà Sàn he has experimented with experimental music and worked as a curator. He concerns himself with urbanisation and the push to modernise or digs into history to explore what has shaped the Vietnam of today.
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02. ‘Carrying the Carriers’ by Nguyễn Thế Sơn
Travelling installation: On Friday 15 & Tues 19 April. Trip starts from Manzi, 14 Phan Huy Ích Street at 3.00 pm, stops at Hanoi Creative City, 1 Lương Yên Street at 3.30 pm and ends at 94 Thanh Nhàn Street
This mobile installation makes visible the plight of urban workers from street vendors to street transporters. Photographs of those urban dwellers, who the artist refers to as carriers, that capture moments highlighting their struggle are turned into life size cardboard cut-outs. Covered in silk they are mounted with a custom made wooden frame on a hired ‘xe thương binh’ – tricycle legally allowed to only be driven by war veterans. The installation then makes its way through the city along some of its busiest streets. This carrier carrying fellow carriers through the urban space is an interactive exhibition and the reactions of random spectators and chance audience is being recorded. Being transported in this way also metaphorically gives the work’s subjects a chance to rest their weary bones. For once they are the carried not the carriers.
Nguyễn Thế Sơn
Throughout his 20-year career Nguyễn Thế Sơn has directed his curiosity at different media and a variety of subjects all of which he researches with academic precision. He works as a silk professor at the University of Fine Arts in Hanoi and has made Vietnam’s rapid development and growth – be it in the economy or society at large – the focus of his work. He has worked with silk, lacquer, photography and installation. He received his Master Degree in photography in China and since his return to Hanoi has established himself as one of Vietnam’s most prolific contemporary minds and artists.
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03. ‘Without Words’ by Nguyễn Quốc Thành
Hanoi Creative City public restroom on ground floor (from 9 to 15 April); Hanoi Creative City’s main hall (15 April to 19 April), 1 Lương Yên Street
The installation is mounted in the very space it is making sense of in relation to the queer and LGBT community: public restrooms. The curtains this artwork consists of are made from familiar repurposed material and signify the fragile border between public and private. They can separate one part of the space from another but peeking is always possible, they allow for noise to travel and are altogether easy to push aside and expose what is behind them. The privacy they offer is as faulty as that of a public restroom used by many members of the gay community across the world to meet and get together in ‘private’. This contradiction is explored, as is the strictly gendered space of public restrooms. Who is allowed to do what where? Male and female is clearly marked and enforced through social norms that are at odds with a queer view of the world.
Nguyễn Quốc Thành
Nguyễn Quốc Thành is a Hanoi based artist. His practice includes photography, writing, performance art, installation, clothes making and organising queer art events. He is a founding member of Nhà Sàn Collective, an independent contemporary art collective. In 2013 he founded Queer Forever! Vietnam’s first queer art festival. Queer Forever! is a platform for sharing the love for and knowledge of queerness in Vietnamese culture.
| Manzi Art Space 14 Phan Huy Ich, Hanoi |
