KVT – The Yin without the Yang

KVT using lots of descriptive licence and photographs to describe the female netherworld phantoms at Cuci

Cuci Gallery has installed its first solo exhibition after opening its doors to the public last summer and for those who don’t know how to find it it’s in the Cinematheque complex at 22A Hai Ba Trung….Its up the stairs near Maison des Arts and overlooks the revamped and humming Cine Café. It’s a large, one room art space opening onto a wide and leafy verandah

The exhibition is a real doozy-as in oomphy, extraordinary and bizarre

The showcased artist is 40 year old Nguyen Khanh Toan who is, so the publicity from the gallery states, is nicknamed Spooky Toan and occasionally Drunken Toan- but it’s the Spooky nomenclature that grabs you inside the art space

The show is called YIN and the simplest definition I could get that fits how I want to read Toan’s work is probably:

Yin 陰 or 阴 1[philosophy] negative/passive/female principle in nature 2 the moon 3 shaded orientation 4 covert; concealed; hidden 5 vagina 6 penis 7 of the netherworld 8 negative 9 north side of a hill 10 south bank of a river 11 reverse side of a stele 12 in intaglio 13 overcast 14 sinister; treacherous

And more simplistically:

the feminine passive principle in nature that in Chinese cosmology is exhibited in darkness, cold, or wetness and that combines with yang to produce all that comes to be.

The above provokes my question about how feminists or those who profess empathy for women’s issues can really go in for such patriarchal stuff?

When you enter Cuci you are certainly in the Yin and the muscular and dominant male (including the sperm incubating genitals) of sunny side up Yang are mostly banished

All over the walls are white, black and red cut out cartoons that sort of stop you in your tracks. They are of grotesque figures, malformed, organic, tortured, disfigured, and, if resembling human forms, are generally females or child like. These bodies effectively create Toan’s vision of the netherworld of the dead. The living dead too, if, like Toan, we factor in genetically malforming chemicals such as Agent Orange, man made cancerous agents in the air, soil and water….. (the list could go on and on)

. As the netherworld described in the Yin is feminine in character it is apt that the phantoms in Toan’s version of the netherworld are of that gender

Toan’s netherworld also floats with the icons and votive offerings and incense that are burnt to give dead ancestors some creature comfort and to remind them to fix a few things up for the living…be they creature comforts, desperate wishes…..health, wealth and happiness.

My images don’t do Toan’s netherworld the atmospheric justice that the naked eye is greeted to in the gallery. The lighting in the gallery is suitably dim to create a sensibly spooky feel but enough to pick out Toan’s series of 18 layered paper/mixed media that are formally paraded around the walls and almost overawed by the cutouts.

A lot of Toan’s emphasis in these 18 works is on the accepted and expected funeral traditions because he utilizes votive papers as the underlay of each work.

At first he was tentative about using such materials as they are considered to be sensitive to religious practices and are still important to traditions surrounding Vietnamese ancestor worship.

The 18 works are almost subsumed by the cutouts but when you hone in on them they also pack a punch. His aim was to create a haunted and claustrophobic effect. Subjects range from what some will call the macabre secular to macabre religious

If this exhibition was to be re-installed at a larger galley with dark, cavernous rooms Toan’s cutouts, extended, free reined and galloping, (writhing and squirming and birthing) would be a major winner with Goths, Emos and other associated cult groups that make up a sizable portion of art museum visitors in many parts of the world…not to mention atheists like myself

Should the above come to fruition the curator would have to decide whether and, if so, how to exhibit the works on paper….in splendid isolation or surrounded by floating netherworld creatures and ancestor worship artifacts.

Nguyen Khanh Toan says he doesn’t believe in the spiritual world but wanted to present his version of the netherworld. Some call it hell.

Tuan has constructed his world after death using dogmas and beliefs common to his background and life experience. His is a world, filled with oppression, vulnerability but also swarning with ghosts that have sentimental meaning to the living. Many of the human images are distorted, curtailed and broken with clinging primordial bodies. As well there are animals, natural objects, temples, and shrines that imaginations of the faithful characterize the first realm of the ancestors to be familiarly populated with

Tuan says that he uses specific colors in his own symbolic way and pink, for example, he uses to show deception or the mundanity of human existence

Green, he says is used to indicate the spirits of children (who often resemble ubiquitous Manga) and often indicated as leaves of a banyan tree that grows outside a particular maternity hospital

Toan follows a long line of artists who over the centuries have become disillusioned with the necessity to beleve in the spiritual, religious-even political- rituals and beliefs that formalize and control death and, paradoxically, the living. (often a mish mash mixture of the lot).

As the Yin is a feminine thing perhaps its apt to show some versions of netherworlds by artists who would certainly be described as feminist

By medieval nun Herrad of Lansberg 

…..by Paula Rego

…..and an intimation of death by Frieda Kahlo

Once upon a time, and still in lots of present day religious sects and political systems, the unbelievers and/or questioners like Tuan could face aggressive and unforgiving inquisitions and auto de fers if their versions deviate/ed from the orthodox

I said near the beginning of this opinion piece that I liked the nickname Spooky Tuan in relation to this body of work but there are many, of faith and creed, who may take umbrage and prefer Drunken Toan

It’s the sort of exhibition that may have a polarizing effect upon some viewers

I certainly enjoyed my time with Toan’s installation and look forward to Cuci’s next solo performer…particularly if she/he can get my mind running overtime as effectively as Toan.has

To conclude, a few versions of various Asian netherworlds: