Disrupted Choreographies
21 February–27 April 2014
Carré d’Art–Musée d’art contemporain
Place de la Maison Carrée
30000 Nîmes
France
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10am–6pm
T + 33 (0) 4 66 76 35 70
F + 33 (0) 4 66 76 35 85
info [at] carreartmusee.com
Participating artists: Lena Bui, Tiffany Chung, Dinh Q Le, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Nguyen Huy An, Nguyen Thai Tuan, Nguyen Trinh Thi and ‘The Propeller Group’
Disrupted Choreographies weaves eight contemporary voices from Vietnam who propose alternate narratives between colonial histories, collective behavior, systems of class and the crumbling of ideological thought. This exhibition challenges the relationship between Vietnam and the ‘global’ stage, illustrating an artistic community critical of the historical consciousness that often stands in for its name (ie. the guilt of war; the tourist getaway; the nostalgic colonial).
Vietnam is a nation with a significant conscience that has appeared in more televised media than any other global conflict in the 20th century, its residual frame is compressed and repeated to ease the guilt of what is locally called the ‘American War.’ Vietnam has long been a theatrical stage for the highly choreographed movement of world politics. This is a community at once cautious and embracive of what is foreign, believing in the opportunity of tomorrow as a residual time, as potential for renewal.
The artists in this exhibition juxtapose historical event and social phenomena; relevant to the diasporic contexts they conceptually and physically traverse. Their dance in the residual space of failing ideologies, post-industrialized communities, heterotopias and the ramification of representation are careful artistic choreographies that they understand are in cyclical movement, ie. in repeat.
Their conceptual choreographies are habitual in the work of Lena Bui and Nguyen Huy An (eg. the study of human behavior or the collective as a strategy of survival); displaced in the work of Dinh Q Le and Jun Nguyen Hatsushiba (eg. the political asylum seeker, the catalogued document, the spiritually disillusioned); absent in the work of Nguyen Thai Tuan and Nguyen Trinh Thi (eg. the symbolic marking of what once stood, or what once took place); and causal in the work of The Propeller Group and Tiffany Chung (eg. the repercussion, the spin-off, the consequence).
These are deliberate methodologies that question the impact of assumed structures of social control—e.g. the archive, entertainment, ethnography, psychology, monumentality and behavioral science, to name but a few. They craft highly stylized aesthetics whose images embrace formats internationally familiar and marketable—the moving, painted, sculpted, three-dimensional immersive constellation and the performed. What anchors and empowers their work is the study of the residual, that liminal near intangible fragment of memory that has become almost rootless for its lack of visual signposting in topical life.
Disrupted Choreographies is co-curated by Zoe Butt (Executive Director and Curator, San Art, Ho Chi Minh City) and Jean-Marc Prevost (Director, Carré d’Art, Nimes).
Sàn Art is an artist-initiated, non-profit contemporary art organization committed to the exchange and excavation of cultural knowledge within an interdisciplinary community. San Art is the most active independent arts organization in Vietnam dedicated to promoting, facilitating and showcasing contemporary art through production, exhibition, discourse and education.
A full-color catalog has been produced for this exhibition with commissioned texts by Zoe Butt, Colin Gardner, Christopher Myers, Bill Nguyen, Liem Binh Luong Nguyen, Nguyen Thuy Diem, Nguyen Vo Thu Huong, Pamela Nguyen-Corey, Philippe Peycam and Nora Taylor.
Event organized in the France-Vietnam Year, Nam Viet Nam Phap 2013–2014
*Tiffany Chung,Iraqi State Railways after Anglo-Iraqi Treaty 1930 & current pipelines, 2010. Micro-pigment ink and oil on vellum and paper, 100 x 63 cm. Collection Agnes Gund, New York. © Tiffany Chung.
