Phu Lang Sa Collabtive

"The pitfall of being able to deeply understand two worlds is to be neither fish nor fowl, to stay in the vagueness so as not to be labeled." (Linda Lê, Étranges Étrangers, 2010, translated from French). 

For its first group show, Phu Lang Sa Collabtive project* presents the creations from our four Vietnamese** artists: Nguyen Phuong Thao, Trần Kim Phượng, Hang Hang, Khieu Anh, with the participation of Asians and Asian-descent invited artists Tống Khánh Hà, Ha-Yeon Joo, Maya de Vulpillières and Kay Maruta.

As the expression suggests, the show’s title neither fish nor fowl reflects the way we define ourselves without anchoring our belonging to a single place or culture. 

From re-examining the history of a family to exploring different ways to look at ordinary objects and daily sceneries, our works suggest adjustments and constant changes of perspectives. 

The show will last four weeks, from July 27th to August 26th 2023 during which the invited artists will participate in a cumulative process; each adding their work thus constantly changing the space and enriching the conversation. An artist talk will be held on August 10th and the show takes its final form during the last week of August. 

About the Artists:

With two installations, Nguyen Phuong Thao presents creations from her latest research venture; both questioning the relationship we have with our possessions  and our affections for them. Her works explore the potentials that hold the objects in life, more than just a metonymy for a capitalist obsession, they reform and transform our grip on internal and external realities. There are two propositions: a self-sufficient storytelling device, and a container of memory.

Trần Kim Phượng [pseudonym], whilst continuing their reflection on the human body and the imaginary spaces it conceives, showcases pieces from their series Utopie (2022-) - a series of drawings and photographs that portrays different and separate worlds seen on individuals’ bodies. 

Hang Hang (Nguyen Thi Thanh Hang) embraces the intermedia resonance between performing arts and performance art as she re-examines micro-history through verbal memory. Her practice is a series of enquiry into the exile and the silencing of memory under different social contexts and pressures. Hang invites the public to enter an elusive moment that remained after a night of gardening with her father and younger sister. Pieces of aluminum engravings catch the light, a hidden bed appears, disappears, a woven image - the last photograph of her family in front of a house that no longer exists - changes from negative to positive depending on the viewer's position. They breathe together.

Khieu Anh is living in the stream of continuous past-present, so she believes in the powers of the Representation and is interested in the possibilities of constantly modeling the world and oneself according to one’s desires. She is developing a recent passion for embroidery, punch needle, rug making and everything yarn-relayed. In this very first experiment, with needle, yarns and clay, Khieu Anh tries to revive an old photo of her and her maternal grandmother. As everything in the photo had already vanished or had come to the point of irreversible change, she attempts to get in ‘touch’ with that strange yet familiar reality that she holds dear. 

Tống Khánh Hà loves to discover phenomena in seemingly trivial things, distills them and derives new aesthetic forms of representation from them. How does white* feel? (German: Wie fühlt sich weiß an?, 2023) is an ongoing series of drawings, inspired by the initial question “How does white sound?”. With her interest lies in the intersection between sound and the visual perception of the colour white, Tống’ graduation essay is part of the project, turning more inwardly into her state of mind in specific situations. On drawings, she creates an in-between space for contemplations on positionality and the act of positioning. The series results from a long process of self-questioning and encountering discrimination in different contexts. How would white, a colour that is often placed in dualistic relations, evoke and represent, especially in reference to diversity, the recognition of differences, and a practice of openness, free from prejudices? 

Ha-Yeon Joo practices various media, including performance, installation, painting, and sculpture. Her works suggest leading-and-misleading experiences that necessarily incorporate performative movements of spectators. The focusing point on the work is to be uncertain, in a constant state of change. Her stone sculptures suggest a drawing activity on a three dimensional oeuvre. As the act of carving follows what the soft stone claims in their characteristics, the volume is built by compromising between the specific shape and the exposed surface. “Breathe. Grind the stone and drink the dust.”

Maya de Vulpillières’s proposition is a collection of soils photographed: her “soils”, or what was happening under her feet. These soils, taken in Cambodia, Vietnam, Reunion Island, India caught her attention for their discrete yet powerful and spontaneous sense of composition. The piece is composed of photographs printed in different formats and glued on small wooden rectangles, similar to modular pieces from kapla, a French game for children made up of pine boards stacked onto each other to make imaginary constructions. Using these miniatures on the ground, she was “constructing worlds, stacked or scattered, thus inviting endless imagination.”

Originally a photographer, Kay Maruta continues to challenge and produce works in diverse fields of expression, including installation, video, sculpture, and music while emphasizing a sense of balance between concept and technique. For the show, he presents an installation that combines glass and photography. Photographic artworks are transferred and attached onto a glass that glows in iridescent colours. It was taken during the summer of 2021 in a slum in Marseille where six or seven Female to Male (FtM) transgender people and queers were living together in a large abandoned house. It was a community that supported each other through the period of mental instability that comes with gender reassignment surgery. 

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* Towards the end of 2018, Hang Hang founded Phu Lang Sa Collectif in the hopes of weaving connections between young Vietnamese artists living in France. Initially a place to discuss the latest exhibitions, for screenings, to help each other by crossing different artistic practices, since 2019, Phu Lang Sa Collectif has deployed an initiative titled Phu Lang Sa Collabtive to support fellow Vietnamese artists in France and Europe whilst continuing to grow and expanding its reach.

** For Vietnamese artists, we respect their choices of using or not using diacritics for the writing of their names.