Deconstructing Agent Orange – History as artistic materials, medium, and testimonies
Thurs 15 Sep 2022, 06:30 am
EMASI Vạn Phúc
No. 2 Street no. 5, Van Phuc Residential City, Thu Duc District, HCMC
Registration link
From the organizer:
To continue the Nguyen Art Foundation’s satellite public programs in association with the exhibition ‘Phổ Hiếu Kỳ’, our event this September brings in a perspective from social science, namely history, and how it serves as an inspiration and testimony for art.
Set in 1998, when the Vietnamese government was pursuing an international lawsuit against companies that were mired in disseminating Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, Dinh Q. Lê staged a pop-up exhibition inside a kiosk in the Saigon Trade Center (now defunct), filled with miniatures, stuffed toys, dolls, and baby clothes – except they all have two heads.
This sets the stage for a critical pursuit into a tumultuous chapter of the nation’s history, where war repercussions are seen through the lens of both art and socio-historical research. Dinh Q. Lê will guide us through the ups and downs of his ‘Damaged Gene’ series, and its successors ‘Lotus Land’ and ‘Pure Land’, where histories become the materials and medium that bear testimonies to the bygone, in order to emphasize the relationship between aesthetics and history, art and social sciences, reality and representation.
* Guest speaker: Dinh Q. Lê, Curator: Dương Mạnh Hùng
* The event will be live streamed on the event page
To ensure a good experience for everyone, we will limit the number of guests to 30.
Language: English only (video documentation of the event will be subtitled in Vietnamese and published online at a later date)
Dinh Q. Lê’s work has been exhibited worldwide. His recent solo exhibitions include ‘Dinh Q. Lê: fil de la mémoire et autres photographies’, the Quai Branly Museum, Paris; ‘ Monuments and Memorials’, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Porland, OR; ‘Pure Land’, Tang Contemporary Art, Bangkok; ‘Earthly Delights’, Project Fulfill Art Space, Taipei; ‘True Journey is Returned’, San Jose Art Museum, CA; ‘Skin On Skin’, 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Hong Kong; ‘Monuments and Memorials’, Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore; ‘A Rite of Passage’, C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Cordoba, Spain; ‘The Colony’, Shetland Arts Center, Shetland, Scotland; ‘Dinh Q. Lê: Memory for Tomorrow’ at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; ‘Destination for the New Millennium, The Art of Dinh Q. Lê’ at the Asia Society, New York; and ‘Project 93: Dinh Q. Lê’ at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. He was also included in the ‘Delays and Revolutions’, Venice Biennale 2003; in dOCUMENTA (13) 2012; and the 2013 Carnegie International.
Dinh Q. Lê also co-founded VNFA and San Art, the most active non profit gallery and residency program in Vietnam. He is the board member of Arts Network Asia Peer Panel, the Danish Embassy’s Cultural Development and Exchange Fund, Asia Society Global Council, and Guggenheim Asian Council. Dinh Q. Lê was the 2010 Visual Art Laureate, Prince Claus Fund, Amsterdam, and a 2014 Rockefeller’s Bellagio Fellow.
Follow updates on event’s page.
