VAC x KOAF | Dance Meets Visual – Art Meets Poetry
05 pm – 07 pm, Fri 21 Nov 2025
VAC Hà Nội
6/44/11 Tô Ngọc Vân, Tây Hồ, Hà Nội
Registration link
From the organizer:
Vietnam Art Collection (VAC) is coming together with the Krossing Over Art Festival (KOAF) through a collaboration between our resident artist Florian Sông Nguyễn and Sébastien Ly. With its commitment to supporting ambitious artistic processes and offering a space for experimentation, this partnership lets us keep exploring the meeting point between visual art and choreography.
Where KOAF and VAC intersect, the work of Florian Sông Nguyễn and Sébastien Ly becomes an inquiry into presence itself: how can a line, a body, a breath transform a space? How can art become a place where disciplines do not merely overlap, but listen, respond, and transform one another?
By positioning itself as a dialogue with “Anh Mã and the Serpent’s Mark”, Florian Sông Nguyễn’s open studio at VAC, Sébastien’s performance proposes a living passage between the artist’s works and the imaginary and historical worlds from which they emerge.
Through dance, Sébastien echoes the lines that run through Florian’s exhibit, as well as the mythical figures that underpin his work. Two texts written by Florian will be heard, along with excerpts from an original tale Sébastien wrote, freely accessible on the YouTube channel ‘Les Légendes de Monsieur Ly’.
The body becomes the place where the material of myth settles — in a slow, precise journey where poetry becomes a link between the visible and the invisible, between the space of the exhibition rooms and their own inner landscapes.
It is a walk through memory, where dance leaves a trace of light and gives form to what shimmers for a moment, just before disappearing.
About Florian Sông Nguyễn
Florian Sông Nguyễn (b.1988) is a Franco-Vietnamese artist living between Paris, Ho Chi Minh City, and Marrakech. His practice centers on drawing as a permeable medium — one that gathers memory, summons imagination, and traces the fragile bonds between humans and other forms of life. Through installations, artist books, performances, and collaborative projects, he develops visual narratives where the intimate meets the mythical, and where reality is quietly unsettled by fiction.
His work has been shown internationally, including at the 12th Berlin Biennale (2022), the Musée Jenisch in Vevey (2024), Drawing Now in Paris (2024, 2025), and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Ho Chi Minh City (2018). He has presented solo exhibitions at the Institut Français in Hanoi (2017) and Ho Chi Minh City (2016), as well as in France at A2Z Art Gallery (Paris, 2025) and the Metaxu (Toulon, 2020). In parallel, he has collaborated on duo exhibitions at Arnaud Lebecq Gallery (Paris, 2024, 2025).
He has published two artist books: Tu sais les insectes aussi ont besoin d’amour (Inpages, 2022) and Les chiens errants (Four Eyes,2024).
His current research focuses on mythogenesis — exploring how fiction and myth can reshape silent histories, connect distant geographies, and reimagine our relationships with the living world.
About Sébastien Ly
Originally trained in econometrics, Sébastien Ly later turned to dance and studied at the CNDC in Angers before joining Punchdrunk in London, where he deepened his fascination for immersive, site-specific performance and the immediacy of audience encounter. In 2005, he founded Kerman, shaping a practice rooted in intimacy, presence, and the subtle tension between performer and spectator.
For many years, his work has evolved at the crossroads of dance and visual art. Everything begins with the body as a place of listening — to time passing, to the character of a space, to the stories and traces that linger beneath the surface. He is drawn to the way a single gesture can animate what appears still, how movement can awaken a room and invite it to breathe.
His artistic journey unfolds through several creative cycles (Living Memories, Inhabiting the World, Constellations), and extends to photography, drawing, writing, and film. He co-directed the short film Appendice with Thierry Thieû Niang.
Since 2022, he has also returned to performing for other choreographers, including Thomas Lebrun, Emmanuelle Huynh, and Kitsou Dubois.
In 2017, he founded the Krossing Over Arts Festival in Ho Chi Minh City, dedicated to contemporary Vietnamese creation. His work has been shown internationally, notably at ZEF Marseille, Châteauvallon-Liberté, Les Hivernales in Avignon, the Tanzmesse in Düsseldorf, the French Institute of Vietnam, the Collection Lambert, and the MAC/VAL.
About KOAF
As a festival, KOAF has become one of the key environments for this approach. Since 2017, its mission — to create connections between art forms, artists, and Vietnamese cities — has naturally expanded this ongoing dialogue between body and image. In a country where tradition and contemporary creation coexist and continually reshape each other, our collaboration has found a special resonance: that of a landscape where time, place, and memory are always shifting.
Follow updates on event’s page.
