Exhibition “PHẬP PHỒNG”

Opening: Thu 1 Dec, 6 pm
Artist Talk: Fri 2 Dec, 6 pm
Exhibition: 2 – 13 Dec 2011, 9 am – 7 pm
Goethe

From Goethe Institut:
From the 2nd of December until the 13th of December the exhibition PHẬP PHỒNG takes places at the Goethe-Institut Hanoi. Six young Vietnamese female artists from CHAAP COLLECTIVE confront themselves as well as their audience with the picture of women in the Vietnamese society by using a variation of installations and performances. This exhibition was prepared in a longer process by one of the most famous artists and curators in Vietnam, Tran Luong, together with the artists.

Statement of exhibition:

PHẬP and PHỒNG
They are strikes
Of lingering worries
Anxious expectation
Fragility and vulnerability
Waiting hopelessly
Bouncing in unease
Exploding spontaneously
Out of steam!
Each of these strikes
Is a throbbing beat
Of PHẬP PHỒNG

Artists: Ha Thi Hong Ngan, Nguyen Thi Hoai Tho, Pham Thu Thuy, Huong By Nguyen, Pham Hong, Vo Ngoc Hue

Curator Tran Luong writes about the exhibition:

“Legitimate as they are, gender and sexuality issues are still something that most of us mention with lot of shyness and discomfort. Citizens of a country that has not been through a sexual revolution, we are under an oppressive pressure of the vestige of Confucian morality.

It is another unfortunate instance of the market opening period, known as mở cửa, when there is an opportunity for instinctive needs to erupt and explode, but in a very wild and pathetic fuller picture, where moral values degrade unceasingly in all social aspects. In the sexuality area only, abortion could have hit a record, while sexually transmitted diseases and infertility are increasing at an uncontrollable speed!

Caught in such a grey zone, women citizens must always change their colors to act in different roles in some very typical circumstances. On the surface of what we see, Vietnamese women of today seem to have been much released. But if we get to know how carefree they really are when they are with their friends, we will clearly see the artificiality and the pressures they must suffer from as they need to frequently change their look and style, trying to dilute themselves in places where moral norms are expected. Workplaces, schools, public spaces, in-laws’, homelands, among many other places, become stages where they are forced to act!

A status of conflict smolders, between wanting vs. not wanting, erupting vs. squeezing, desiring vs. suppressing, ignoring vs. playing cool, being happy vs. being stunned, screaming vs. being silent, getting mad vs. getting blank, and much more.”

Free Admission

For further information about the artists and their art works, visit Goethe’s website.