KVT – on 10+ at NhaSan, the Danes, and Hip Hop
KVT on 10+ at NhaSan, the Danes, and Hip Hop
Hanoi had a lot to offer this week. Highlights were the ’10+’ exhibition at Nha San (on till Sun 14 Dec) and the hip hop piece ‘Faces’ at the Youth Theater. KVT was impressed by both, and offers praise for the sponsors (the Danish Embassy for ’10+’, and Goethe and L’Espace for ‘Faces’) as well as a shiny-eyed look into the future.
FAR, FAR, FAR TOO GOOD TO MISS
It’s brilliant to have an outstanding Vietnamese group exhibition to round off the year. Perhaps it augers well for 2009 when the buffaloes will be taking charge.
The 10th anniversary of Nha San Duc, tucked away in its delightful stilt house in the back streets of Ba Dinh, was a crowded affair with a good mix of locals and foreigners swarming up the rickety stairs and along wobbly verandahs. The first sight of a great performance piece and friends tearing into fresh baked loaves resembling slightly engorged male appendages, followed by a communion of onlookers hungrily gobbling the crusty, white bread, was an anticipatory entree for the other installations. Its questioning of the diminishing status of boys in a patriarchal society that is slowly becoming more sophisticated in its gender attitudes from the upper crust down, was wonderful.
What did I enjoy most in this virtuoso display by several generations of local avant garde artists who have benefited from the fact that this place exists, and Veronica Radulovic and Brian Ring representing the many foreign artists who have participated in it and learnt from it? Was it Nguyen Van Phuc’s set of melting ice blocks with incense in altar bowls embedded within, or Nguyen Trinh Thi’s powerful but gentle video of her grandmother’s bones being unearthed and cleaned? Perhaps Vu Hong Ninh’s faceless altar statues, or Nguyen Huy An’s dress reduced to ashes, or the fabulous cube of Pham Ngoc Duong…..????? Too much to choose from and nothing was less than very good. For the first time ever in Hanoi, all the video installations held me in their grip and the documentary on the 10 years of Nha San Duc is compulsive viewing for anyone interested in Hanoian contemporary art.
If we could chew up all the red tape and spit it onto a table (idea from another excellent piece) we’d have the nucleus here for a Hanoi biennale of contemporary art. If anyone can remember China Inside Out when it broke free of prescription and toured the world late last century and the way it put Chinese art and artists onto the world map will realize that the Nha San Duc exhibitors could be leading Vietnamese art in the same eventual direction.
A discussion and performance piece closes the exhibition on Sunday 14.
THE REALLY GREAT DANES
Lots of foreign Embassies and their offshoots do brilliant stuff for the arts in Vietnam but it’s the Danes and their really progressive ambassador who have continually provided grants and assistance to local experimental artists so that their new work can be done and exhibited. You’d be amazed if I listed all the art and artists they’ve supported this year. The Nha San Duc exhibition is another bit of Danish cream on our art scene. It is really exceptional to see support for the arts like this at a grass roots level. Mr Ambassador you are a marvel!
HIP HOPPING TO GREAT THINGS
Soon Vietnam could have a dance company that will take Hip Hop from its street cred ‘look at me! look at me!’ scene, into the realm of legit contemporary dance. If you missed the performances this week at the Youth Theater you were a bit silly. The drama was good and even the Vietnamese hip hopping fans and their parents were impressed with the outstanding choreography by the young German and French choreographers. The set design was super, the balance of modern and traditional Vietnamese music with onstage musicians was brilliantly conceived.
If the Danes are great then so too are Goethe and L’Espace for providing funds and training for what could well become a Vietnamese art touring group. A bit more experience and a few ballet lessons and the company could Zing into dance stratospheres.
