Living, today for tomorrow
Opening: 05 pm, Sat 16/11/2024
Exhibition: 01 pm – 05 pm, 17 Nov & 20 – 24 Nov 2024
A. Farm studios@ Nhà xoài
6/4 Nguyễn Đăng Giai, Thảo Điền, HCMC
Lầu 6, Amanaki Hotel
10 Nguyễn Đăng Giai, Thảo Điền, HCMC
From the organizer:
A. Farm is pleased to present ‘Living, today for tomorrow’, a group exhibition by Nguyen Hoa, Vicente Arresse and Que with Linh Le as its curator featuring works that the three artists have made during their three-month residency, which started in the beginning of November this year.
‘Living, today for tomorrow’, a rift on a Vietnamese expression for the impermanence of life and everything else, now through a mere play with words suggests a way of life with a sense of mild absurdity. An assertion — not quite. A question — not yet. A manual — perhaps. To live is to remember to misremember one’s national historical legacy; to acknowledge, and to confront what pains, haunts, comforts, and nurtures; and to notice the minute details of daily life as lurking in such a mundane anti-climatic repetition, there lies some humour and even disruption.
About the artists:
Nguyen Hoa works primarily with sculpture, woodcarving and lacquer and painting. Having close ties with his hometown, Hue, he always yearns to converse with the gone past of the Nguyen dynasty and its legacy, which is manifested through temples, mausoleums, traditions and rituals. His works weave together the techniques of woodworking, and traditional lacquer, as well as distilled forms of painting in order to grasp the nuances of place, history, culture and nature. After graduating from the Hue College of Fine Arts in 2005 majoring in Sculpture, Nguyen Hoa worked as a restorer for local organisations. He also took up a teaching post at his alma mater. Since then, he has participated in various exhibitions, both local and international. Some of them includes ‘To each of their own sky’ curated by Do Tuong Linh at Mơ Art Space, Ha Noi (2023), Contemporary Art Week ‘Nổ cái bùm’ in Hue (2020), group exhibitions in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and Chiang Mai, Thailand (2018), the notable Gallery 9’s 25th-anniversary jubilee exhibition in Amsterdam (2014), ‘The Lost Images’ at Ganesha Gallery, the Netherlands (2010). Apart from his artistic practice, Nguyen Hoa has actively participated in many community-development activities in Hue. In 2011, he co-founded Then cafe with artist Tran Tuan, and in 2020, he launched Tum, which tripled as his studio, home and a gathering space where artists can organise discussions and residencies.
Vicente Arrese (1993, Santiago, Chile) works primarily with painting and explores the rich potential of everyday things, like eggs, washing machines or a car. Fascinated by the endless possibilities and scenarios an object can give and intrigued by the intersections with other disciplines, Vicente Arrese invites audiences to question conventional perception through sculptural language and spatial installation.
Que is interested in the function of media, especially those that can create (or contain) communication (such as photography with the storage capacity to recall–contrast–perceive –illusion) to talk about the structure of discourse in (semi) free spaces. Then adapt to the paradigm of mass media – communication for individuals operating in the contemporary digital space. From the personal works that made from the grown up time based on the development of his urban life, Que started to focus on other existants from outside through research information–research essays about events that collaborate poetry–prose works as main material.
About A. Farm
A. Farm is an international art residency program in Ho Chi Minh City, supporting collaboration and exchange among Vietnamese and international artists. It is managed by MoT +++ and Goethe-Institut Ho Chi Minh City with support from Amanaki Thao Dien. In Season 6, running from September to December 2024, A. Farm also partnered with the Leipzig Office for International Cooperation to host one Leipzig-based artist
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