the kingfisher’s beak

19 Jul – 20 Aug 2023
Sàn Art
Units B6.16 and B6.17
Floor 6, Building B, Millennium MasterB
132 Bến Vân Đồn, District 4, HCMC (enter from Nguyễn Hữu Hào str.)

From the organizer:

Sàn Art is pleased to collaborate with urban artist Liar Ben on the project, the kingfisher’s beak, a public art project that takes inspiration from every day’s life at Cù lao Nguyễn Kiệu, a small island that is attached to District 4.

Kingfishers are known to be amongst the most precise hunting birds despite their small bodies. They usually live close to the water and tend to observe their prey very carefully before swooping down from a perch. Playfully taking the role of a kingfisher, the artist carefully crafts and invites the audience into his playground, an expedition starting at Sàn Art, leisurely strolling along the canal and exploring the artworks amidst the scattered urban lives.

Taking a complicated urban space as the core, the project calls for the consideration of social and spatial relations during artistic production as well as consumption. We will be taking a strolling exercise, paying homage to ‘dérive’ but this time instead of drifting with no purpose, try to pay attention to how existing lives are layered on top of abandoned ones, how spaces can be treated as both cultural and political landmark, but at the same time, a playground… a concrete jungle suddenly turning into water under the beak of the kingfisher.

About Liar Ben

Liar Ben (b.1990), is an urban artist, who did not finish his schooling at the University of Fine Art, HCMC. His practices include street art, graffiti, art toy and his research focus on finding and making meanings out of the flow of urban life, to connect authentic local creativity to every day’s life. Some of his notable projects include Cô Mía (2012-now), Cơm Hộp (2019 – now), he’s now working fulltime as a very ham chơi artist, who likes to explore, observe and play with his art.

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