KVT – Amidst the Oxen Herds

KVT confronts emasculation

Art lovers now have another opinion giver on the Grapevine and it’s a good thing that a new breath of fresh air will waft around the labyrinths of the Hanoi art scene! Ilza, our new critiquer views art from intelligent, intellectual and educated angles and, I assume, writes from the head, always giving us a considered and thoughtful point of view. I’m looking forward to her columns.

As for me….well I’m a visceral art viewer and opinion giver. My intellect comes into play much later (sometimes too much later) in the viewing process. I know that I’ve really connected with an event or work when a satisfied rumble emanates from the depths of my pelvic floor muscles, moves steadily upwards so that it connects with a strengthened heartbeat and pushes upwards to flood my brain with endorphins of content, surprise, outrage, wowiness, complete concentration, laughter…or whatever!

Thus it was a couple of weeks ago with me and Project Black. I loved its earthiness, its naughtiness and irreverent lack of subtlety…where as Ilza was not impressed. (Editors Note: Read Ilza’s comments on KVT’S piece about Project Black at the bottom of the post in the Comments section)

The visceral syndrome overcame me yesterday at the Viet Art Center in Yet Kieu when I stood surrounded by the large canvasses of 28 year old, handsome Thanh Hoa-an, Nguyen The Dung. His Oxen series is lovely to behold, delightfully funny – even a bit outrageous – to be in the middle of and worthwhile engaging with its ideas…and you’d have to be a dunderhead not to enjoy spending a bit of time with it.

Take an adolescent bovine and castrate it and you supposedly render it compliant, less dangerous than its testicular intact brothers. Emasculate it young and it’s called it a steer. As an adult at four it becomes known as an ox. And it’s these emasculated animals that Dung uses as figurative, personified metaphors for a large cohort of his human brothers.