Over the span of three weeks, 2000+ found photographs of the Vietnam War from the Internet were printed and shredded immediately with a paper shredder. The physical photographs exist only for a fleeting moment, still damp with ink, within a repeated process of view–print–shred. What is left of this performative action is strewn throughout the exhibition floor. The remains of a series of violent historical events begin to look strikingly similar to one another, each shredded piece acting as part of a whole, blurring past and present into a symbolic, unsolvable puzzle of disremembering.
Drifting through a different space is Family (2019), a work comprising 42 jellyfish meticulously created in silk and polyester. Gently lit with color-changing lights, the jellyfish float down from the 5.5 meter-high ceiling at the gallery entrance, adapting to the gallery’s architecture as the ceiling height decreases. While visually quite stunning, it is important to note that some jellyfish species are poisonous with tentacles that can kill on contact. Bearing in mind that jellyfish come together in blooms more by natural impulses rather than familial allegiance, the artwork’s title takes on an ironic tone and prods us to consider how families are shaped by society. (Galerie Quynh)
Adrift in Darkness, an installation composed of amorphous three- dimensional sculptures, saw the artist explore rattan weaving for the very first time, featuring the recent refugee exodus from Africa and the Middle East into Southern Europe.
Dinh Q. Lê: “It takes reference from the images of people packed so tightly on a rickety old boat, floating in the middle of a dark ocean. As one who did the same to escape the harsh Vietnamese communist regime at the time, issues of this mass exodus and the fear and rejection of Europeans have been on my mind lately. I like to think that we are all sitting on a rock and floating in this dark universe. The faces are drawn from images of large group protests from all over the world. As the world’s population grows larger, conflicts arise as more people cross territories. Anger and hatred abound, but we all need to step back and take a look at where we are.”
Adrift in Darkness, an installation composed of amorphous three- dimensional sculptures, saw the artist explore rattan weaving for the very first time, featuring the recent refugee exodus from Africa and the Middle East into Southern Europe.
Dinh Q. Lê: “It takes reference from the images of people packed so tightly on a rickety old boat, floating in the middle of a dark ocean. As one who did the same to escape the harsh Vietnamese communist regime at the time, issues of this mass exodus and the fear and rejection of Europeans have been on my mind lately. I like to think that we are all sitting on a rock and floating in this dark universe. The faces are drawn from images of large group protests from all over the world. As the world’s population grows larger, conflicts arise as more people cross territories. Anger and hatred abound, but we all need to step back and take a look at where we are.”
Adrift in Darkness, an installation composed of amorphous three- dimensional sculptures, saw the artist explore rattan weaving for the very first time, featuring the recent refugee exodus from Africa and the Middle East into Southern Europe.
Dinh Q. Lê: “It takes reference from the images of people packed so tightly on a rickety old boat, floating in the middle of a dark ocean. As one who did the same to escape the harsh Vietnamese communist regime at the time, issues of this mass exodus and the fear and rejection of Europeans have been on my mind lately. I like to think that we are all sitting on a rock and floating in this dark universe. The faces are drawn from images of large group protests from all over the world. As the world’s population grows larger, conflicts arise as more people cross territories. Anger and hatred abound, but we all need to step back and take a look at where we are.”
‘Coral Sea As Rolling Thunder’ (2017) installation for Art Basel Statements traces how rapid economic growth, communication and exchange alters subjecthood in contemporary Vietnam.
Tieu has further shot a series of photographs in response to the environmental incident, which occurred in 2016, when Formosa Plastics Group released toxic chemicals into the ocean, where Tieu during this time shot her video work. Across the installation – ranging from the three photographs Inhale, Exhale, Inhale Again (all 2017) hung on melted aluminium bars and a LED sculpture installation – Tieu expands on the exploration of the fragility of the body, singling out details of the daily exposure to pollution. The sculptural LED work shows the marine weather forecasts for the South China Sea, an area in front of the Vietnamese coastline that is currently claimed by China and where Formosa’s toxic spill occurred. In these weather forecasts Tieu investigates unforeseeable influences causing humans and environments to adapt, alter and self-repair. Underpinning the installation, the modified aluminium structure, reminiscent of this observation, references architectural design and the organic body equally, thus pointing out the interactions and crossing lines between corporate and individual responsibility, private and public sectors.
‘Coral Sea As Rolling Thunder’ (2017) installation for Art Basel Statements traces how rapid economic growth, communication and exchange alters subjecthood in contemporary Vietnam.
Tieu has further shot a series of photographs in response to the environmental incident, which occurred in 2016, when Formosa Plastics Group released toxic chemicals into the ocean, where Tieu during this time shot her video work. Across the installation – ranging from the three photographs Inhale, Exhale, Inhale Again (all 2017) hung on melted aluminium bars and a LED sculpture installation – Tieu expands on the exploration of the fragility of the body, singling out details of the daily exposure to pollution. The sculptural LED work shows the marine weather forecasts for the South China Sea, an area in front of the Vietnamese coastline that is currently claimed by China and where Formosa’s toxic spill occurred. In these weather forecasts Tieu investigates unforeseeable influences causing humans and environments to adapt, alter and self-repair. Underpinning the installation, the modified aluminium structure, reminiscent of this observation, references architectural design and the organic body equally, thus pointing out the interactions and crossing lines between corporate and individual responsibility, private and public sectors.
‘Coral Sea As Rolling Thunder’ (2017) installation for Art Basel Statements traces how rapid economic growth, communication and exchange alters subjecthood in contemporary Vietnam.
Tieu has further shot a series of photographs in response to the environmental incident, which occurred in 2016, when Formosa Plastics Group released toxic chemicals into the ocean, where Tieu during this time shot her video work. Across the installation – ranging from the three photographs Inhale, Exhale, Inhale Again (all 2017) hung on melted aluminium bars and a LED sculpture installation – Tieu expands on the exploration of the fragility of the body, singling out details of the daily exposure to pollution. The sculptural LED work shows the marine weather forecasts for the South China Sea, an area in front of the Vietnamese coastline that is currently claimed by China and where Formosa’s toxic spill occurred. In these weather forecasts Tieu investigates unforeseeable influences causing humans and environments to adapt, alter and self-repair. Underpinning the installation, the modified aluminium structure, reminiscent of this observation, references architectural design and the organic body equally, thus pointing out the interactions and crossing lines between corporate and individual responsibility, private and public sectors.
‘Coral Sea As Rolling Thunder’ (2017) installation for Art Basel Statements traces how rapid economic growth, communication and exchange alters subjecthood in contemporary Vietnam.
At the core of the installation stands the artist’s theme of the body in its layered political aspects. In her major new video work Memory Dispute (2017) Tieu investigates the shifting economies of the use of toxins in past and contemporary Asia. Memory Dispute captures a remote rainforest in central Vietnam, an area heavily attacked by napalm during the Vietnamese American war. The footage recording ghostly images of an ecosystem now irrevocably altered. The landscape becomes a metaphorical study when contrasted with footage, which meticulously document the process of an illicit skin whitening treatment prevalent throughout Southeast Asia. An acid fluid is applied onto the body to separate two skin layers, allowing the entire first surface layer of skin to be peeled off. Skin, the protective surface of the body, functions here as a metaphor and a means to inquire on the circulation and shifting impact of these external forces onto individuals.
Tieu’s moving image work maps disparate and converging lines between the inflammable liquid napalm and that of an acid skin peel, exploring the body, nature and Vietnam’s layered historic colonial legacy as a vessel exposed to harm and self-harm and wider implications to future uncertainties.