KVT – Nau and Carbon Footprints @ Cuc = A 5 Star Rating

KVT gets very enthusiastic in the Land of Energy of Nguyen Hong Ngoc

On the fifth floor, right at the top of the Women’s museum is a gallery space that is occasionally used by CUC Gallery for exhibitions.

Until the end of April the space has one of the most interesting shows you’re likely to see in Hanoi this year

It’s by a 26 year old artist simply known as Nau who was tertiary educated in Hanoi and who now hails from TPHCM

Many would say that Nau has been lucky to have been scooped up by the extremely well connected commercial gallery CUC which represents a select group of artists, proffers art work to a select clientele and whose main gallery appears only be accessed by invitation or appointment. Others from the CUC stable who impress me are Lai Duc Ha and Nguyen Trung

CUC staff knows how to arrange a show for visual impact and Nau’s work is spread tastily around what could be a difficult area.

Her work is very engaging and intellectual.

Nau’s starting point seems t have been an investigation into the coal mining industry around Thai Nguyen, near where she was born, and research into mining’s environmental and sociological affects in the mountainous areas of her native province-and beyond

A research genesis was CARBON which Nau points out is basic element of life, has a hexagonal structure, is in the core of the sun and the stars.

Her canvas is extremely broad and in this exhibition she has very carefully focused on a few salient facets about Carbon and its effect on her once upon a time home town of Phan Me, a close relative of the industrial city of Thai Nguyen.

As soon as I entered the space I was reminded of the work of southern artist and researcher, Viet Kieu, Rich Streitmatter -Tran who has had his philosophical conceptual work featured at Manzi (2012) and in this space last year when CUC had another of its rare public openings.

The slim, but informative catalogue has an excellent back piece by Streitmatter-Tran that touches on his mentorship of her over the past three years. In my opinion she’s been an exceptionally lucky young artist to have had such a thoughtful and exciting experimental research artist to discuss with

When I recall other work I’ve experienced by this young artist (experience is an apt verb to use in relation to Nau) it’s evident that she could be amongst the next generation of important Vietnamese artists in the international art arena….oh for a rich and influential impresario to come along and launch a few of these young things into the international art market and exhibition stratospheres- as Saatchi did in the early 1990ies to the likes of Hirst, Emin, Turk, Saville, Whiteread and Ofili

This has been a long winded way of getting close up and personal with Nau’s exhibition, which is not all her own work!!!!

A striking entry, classical like bust was sculpted last year by Nguyen Viet Cam. It’s a superb piece and is carved from coal

The personage is King Minh Menh who, in 1840, sanctioned Vietnam’s first commercial coal mining industry-and if you’ve ever been into the towns and villages in the mountainous areas that spread up the coast bordering Ha Long and Bai Thu Long you’ll have been amazed and appalled at the legacy of that decision. In many coal mining communities a ’hell on earth’ description is appropriate.

The title of the exhibition THE LAND OF ENERGY starts to translate about Nau’s spent her very early years in Phan Me, a coal mining community town that is part of the larger city of Thai Nguyen where, since 1959 coal from mines in environmentally delicate, watershed areas fired pig iron and steel furnaces .

In 1998, 2006 and 2012 landslides from the slag and coal dumps around Phan Me destroyed lives and houses and still promise to be devastating in the future

An aerial photographic view of the mines has been overworked by Nau and is exhibited in a light box. It’s called BROKEN STRUCTURES and is a stark memorial to scarred landscapes and lives

Opposite is a frieze of seven, small animal and human figures Nau has sculpted from coal that at first glance may be mistaken as figures from a lunar horoscope calendar

The group is labeled IT S TOO FRAGILE and one can conjecture that the artist is suggesting the fragility of life for the miners and their families…not only from landslides but from all the other health and economic complications that make prolonged life suspect for such people.

To me it referenced a museum at Pompeii where charcoaled fossilized remains suggest once active communities.

I recall photographs of coal mining communities in developing countries that share pathos with these wall objects

Also, too, the sculptures could be interpreted as memorials to the mundane

There is a shamanistic appeal about the array.

When Nau revisited the town she found a deserted house, the walls of which were covered in drawings of human figures in a variety of poses, animals, flora, and graffiti…all drawn/written in charcoal. Thus the suggestion is that the sculptures are copies of some of the observed drawings

A feature wall of the exhibition has what appear to be 6 charcoal rubbings displayed under perspex

One may conjecture that the rubbings are of wall surfaces in that deserted house either done as conventional rubbings using charcoal on paper, or, as hand pressed coal grime prints

To obtain the works named SUPER PIECES the artist has used-and annotated that- the material is grapheme, a laminated graphite sheet which is described as a metamaterial of the future and formed from carbon atoms bonded in hexagonal cycle. It is described as a super hard, ultra thin and lightweight material

These prints carry the gravitas of prints we usually associate with precious archaeological rubbings

Then comes Nau’s piece de resistance A large, 19 light box paneled, sculpture that references NASA’s James Webb space telescope that is designed to seek out extra terrestrial life. In the first image from the present exhibition and the second from CUC gallery website

Nau indicates that the 19 panels similarly reference the circle of re-incarnation in Tibetan Thangka paintings, images of activity etc at Phan Me coal mine viewed from above, and also the hexagonal structure of ‘metamaterial’ grapheme. Click here for images from CUC website

One installation that needs more resolution before it becomes as outstanding as it should be is the video projection that animates 5 projections onto a large block of coal rock and transparent film paper.

It takes us back to a pristine time before humans scavenged the earth for fuel …. forwards to the immediate past when we should have exploited the natural resources of the planet with empathy for future generations …. to the immediate future when climate warming caused by fossil fuel burning threatens all humanity

The block of coal in the installation is the last block of coal left remaining from an exhausted coal reserve near Phan Me.

The figure is, Ba Chua Thuong Ngan, the Mother Goddess of the Forrest and the soul of the mountain to whom people must burn offerings to apologize for their exploitation of her natural resources ( a sort of carrying coals to Newcastle or to Cam Pha scenario!) – the video is only projected 3 times per day but if you’re lucky you can inveigle the attendants to start the computer for you

From here on I paraphrase the essay by Streitmatter-Tran which is an excellent way to conclude my opinion piece about an excellent exhibition

‘…….the different configurations of material may at first seem impersonal, but the brilliant connection that the artist is developing connects it to human circulation and social economy….how our use of fossil fuels affect the environment and social relations …how our constructs of value are informed by this element ……..Nau has been able to connect these issues to a global discourse that moves beyond Vietnam itself. While her research and relations are local, this issue is replicated in the developed and developing nations worldwide