KVT and Ugly = Beautiful

(Shortened Vietnamese version available)

KVT enjoys unraveling silk at the Japan Foundation

The Japan Foundation has done it again, giving us another intriguing art exhibition.

28 year old HCMC artist, Le Hoang Bich Phuong, with compliments of San Art from the same city, has mounted a popular and beautiful exhibition of water color on silk paintings. It’s called ‘A Transformative Disguise’ and here’s an image of the artist wearing her TV interview guise.

It’s funny how ugly can be re-defined as beautiful. All of Phuong’s work is ugly, sometimes incredibly ugly, but at the same time you’d have to go a long way to see anything as beautiful this year in Hanoi.

There’s an ethereal feel to the artist’s silk work and it’s this otherworldliness that seduced me at first as I read stories and allusions into the delicate portraits. They’re basically about the masks and personas that we all adopt as we tread a path through life. Some of us have insecurities that make us re-invent ourselves in various guises. While others are so secure that the deliberate adaptation of personas is playfully, and sometimes, harmfully, manipulative. One of the most important lessons a child learns growing up could be said to be the ability to mask vulnerability. Though another important lesson is to learn not to be seduced into believing that we actually are those self manufactured visages and personalities.

The truly sane amongst us realize who they actually are – minus accoutrements – and know and rationalize the masks and emotional disguises they adopt to either manipulate, to play with, or to retain their perceived sanity. Looking at Phuong’s work I felt that she is probably amongst the sane ones as she explores the disguises she, and others, adopt. These disguises Phuong likes to show as metamorphoses from the outwardly human forms and faces to those of various animals. Perhaps this is because we often relate various human traits to animals (cunning as a fox, timid as a mouse, brave as a lion….etc). Also the various myths, legends and fairy stories that underpin many cultures are often intertwined with animals and the concept of metamorphosis…..but before I get myself too tied up in knots on a rainy day just after noon when my eyelids and brain are drooping, I’d recommend San Art curator, Zoe Butt’s exposition of the exhibition (available at the exhibition desk).

Sometimes the disguises people try on for a while (now, come on, don’t be coy – we all like to mask up) are extremely transparent …a bit like this one that can be viewed from both inside and outside the gallery.

It would appear that most transformative disguises on show are self portraits – which is a courageous thing to do, to expose your own vulnerabilities and fragilities to a critical audience – and may be why a lot of viewers seem to choose the work titled ’Raphael’ as their favorite as it pushes the concept into the biographical rather than warts and all autobiographical.

Here’s a selection of the rest of these extremely collectable works (some on show are already in private collections.) and for some reason my favorite is the perky female with her fingers up her nose, caught in the act of making as ugly a face as is physically possible.