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The medium is the message

When visiting Louis Thompson's glass blowing studio, I was eager to hear sharing from artists about the glass blowing process and techniques. But I was most intrigued by how contemporary artists “manipulate” and experiment with the material so they can make social commentary. This particular sharing from the young artist, who is having a residency there, reminds me of McLuhan’s famous quote ‘Medium is the message’.

Back in 2019, when I was still pursuing my Bachelor's degree in Professional Communication, McLuhan’s essay on communication changed how I perceive and process information. The most typical example of ‘The Medium is the Message’ is pieces of news, updated on television, are considered more serious compared to a tweet or a Facebook status, despite the same content. Coming back to the social commentary in glass blowing, I realize that this material is usually associated with a decorative purpose, which makes it more difficult to deliver socio-political messages. On the other hand, documentary video artworks seem to have more advantages in this aspect. In art history, another example of the medium is the message’ is the scale of paintings. Large-scaled oil paintings were considered to have more significant meaning because they used to be used to illustrate important historical events or religious (biblical) narratives only. Meanwhile, miniatures were painted to serve decorative purposes or gifting among the aristocrat.

Therefore, coming back from the studio, I have thought about how artists intervene with the medium, thus changing the message. For example, at Louis Thompson studio, the artist told me that some artists used recycling material such as old, broken glassware or impure sand to create new glass blowing artworks. And those ‘scratches’ or traits of impurity can express the artists’ opinion on environmental issues. An artist even collects broken glasses from his/her neighborhood, melting them down to make new pieces, which shows a strong practice of community and collaboration. I believe that such a message is getting more important as individualism is dominant in contemporary society, thanks to the technological advance of smart devices and algorithm.

Another example of ‘The Medium is the Message’ I encountered in London was the talk with Xanthe Somers—a Zimbabwean sculptor, whose artworks I also had a chance to appreciate with my own eyes at the V&A Storehouse. She is a ceramics sculptor—another material that has a highly decorative function. Indeed, she is fond of creating ceramic sculptures of domestic objects such as mirrors, lamps, and vessels. Most of her works are large-scale pieces, utilizing vibrant colors, which suggest a conflict between playfulness and seriousness. For example, in her ‘Fruits of Our Forefathers’ artwork, she attached cherries to the vessel— a cheerful and colorful symbol. However, it reflected a strong political undercurrent—the dominance of Eurocentric culture in Zimbabwe. Growing up in her home country, Somers was surrounded by British cultural symbols, although they isolated the Zimbabwean from reality. The British came over for her home’s natural resources and planted ideas on the land. It was not a beautiful truth that it first seemed to the audience. Figuring out this underlying message and the close connection between Somers and her Zimbabwean heritage, I have looked at her vessels from a different perspective. This ‘enlightening’ process was intriguing to me, but at the same time, it brought out a heavy sense of unease.

Contemporary artists truly inherit the legacy of modern art by being experimental and breaking down the academic pedagogy, which has always been Eurocentric ever since the 15th century. However, I believe that before tapping into the ‘message’ and fulfilling the ambition of changing the ‘medium’, the artist should master the technique. Otherwise, they may fail because they have not yet fully understood the material itself. The academic art training is still essential to decolonization and the experimental process. The label of ‘conceptual art’ can not be an excuse for poor execution and lack of knowledge. In my opinion, making art is a scientific field.

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A glimpse into London’s art world in the 19th century

The most fascinating room in Tate Britain in my opinion

At Tate Britain, there is a room where ‘The Portrait of Ellen Terry in Lady Macbeth’ by John Singer Sargent is hung, alongside other paintings and prints that belong to the Victorian artistic community. I was deeply fascinated by this particular room when visiting Tate Britain because it gave me a glimpse into the arts and literature scene of Britain in the 19th century.

I found it interesting to draw connections between artists, actresses and writers that I had known before when standing in the room, contemplating the painting. For instance, Ellen Terry was one among actresses that Oscar Wilde used to admire. He even wrote a sonnet, dedicated it to her, which was published in society perodical The World.

In the lone tent, waiting for victory, She stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain, Like some wan lily overdrenched with rain;

— Oscar Wilde, ‘Queen Henrietta Maria’

Besides, they exchanged several letters, showing mutual admiration and aspect. In her autobiography ‘The Story of my Life’, Terry wrote:

‘That phrase ‘wan lily’ represented perfectly what I had tried to convey, not only in this part, but in Ophelia. I hope I thanked Oscar enough at the time. Now he is dead and I cannot thank him any more…I had so much bad poetry written to me that these lovely sonnets from a real poet should have given me the greater pleasure.’

On the other hand, Sargent and Wilde were neighbors on Tite Street in Chelsea, alongside James Abbott McNeill Whistler, who was also a painter. From Wilde’s window, he could see Terry, in the Lady Macbeth’s costume, stepping out of Sargent’s studio. Regarding the street, Oscar Wilde also praised its character after Sargent painted Terry: ‘The street that on a wet and dreary morning has vouchsafed the vision of Lady Macbeth in full regalia magnificently seated in a four-wheeler can never again be as other streets: it must always be full of wonderful possibilities.’

Opposite the painting, there were a series of prints, illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley. The most interesting work to me is the Frotispiece for John Davidsons’ Plays, drawn in 1893 and published in 1894. This print brought well-known and influentual faces in the contemporary artistic community, including Sir Augustus Harris in the center, who is the manager of Drury Lane Theater (now renamed to His Majesty Theater) in London. Oscar Wilde was also illustrated with features of Bacchus, the God of wine-making, orchards, fruit, insanity and fesitivty of the Roman. There were also other powerful names including Henry Harland—the editor of The Yellow Book literature magazine, the poet Richard Le Gallienne, the ballet dancer Adeline Genee, and Beardsley’s sister herself, who was also an actress.

I could truly feel Oscar Wilde’s presence in the room with his influence and even scandalous, controversial legacy. Aubrey Beardsley also had a direct relationship with Oscar Wilde. When Wilde published Salome —a play in French, based on the story of Salome in the Bible—which was later adapted to an one act opera by Richard Strauss, Beardsley was commissioned to create a single drawing. However, he received rejection from the magazine. Wilde, on the other hand, was so fascinated by Beardsley’s works that he offered a contract to create ten full-page illustrations and a cover design for the English edition. Instead of solely translating Salome to visual language, Beardsley added his own complementary interpretation, which created an intimate dialogue with its own subversive symbolism. Under Beardsley’s hands, the illustrations subverted the Victorian gender norms by putting women in sexually empowered positions, even predatory and dominant, instead of the demure and pliant positions that society expected them to be. The play was already targeted and even banned in Britain for direct references to Biblical narratives. Combined with Beardsley’s works, the play caused a scandal, followed by a rumor that Oscar Wilde wore Salome’s costume in the final scene himself. People spread a photo allegedly of Wilde in Salome’s Seven Veils, but it was in fact Alice Guszalewicz—a Hungarian soprano. To see Beardsley’s illustrations with my own eyes was a mesmerizing experience to me, because I am a big fan of Oscar Wilde and had a chance to watchthe Salome opera myself five years ago.

The room, with the brilliant arrangement of the curator, provided me with a vivid picture of the Victorian art scene. It also expanded my knowledge on my favorite writer’s personal life, which is important because one’s personal experiences always have a great influence on his or her artistic works. For example, Wilde’s novels and plays have become a great source of inspration for LGBTQ artists because he was a queer writer himself, and had such a great sympathy towards female characters that he synchronized himself with them. Simply having a chance to learn new things has already been a pleasure for me.

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Blue Colonialism

One of the most intriguing (and to a point, disturbing) experiences I had in London was being immersed in the blue color, specifically the blue color of religious paintings. In the history of classical oil painting, blue was the rarest color because to extract the blue pigment, vendecolori (collor sellers) in the fifteen century had to extract pigments from lapis lazuli—a rich, deep blue rock that is extremely rare in nature. Since the 15th century, the blue color (also referred to as ultramarine) was only depicted in religious paintings because at that time, only the churches could afford to appoint commissions from artists, especially the Old Masters like Raphael and Michelangelo. The aristocrat was also able to set up painting commissions, but the ultramarine was barely used in their portraits. In other words, ultramarine and lapis lazuli were not only symbols of wealth but also power.

The Dead Christ Mourned ('The Three Maries') by Annibale Carracci

What made my heart ache was the enormous number of religious paintings, using ultramarine, exhibited at the National Gallery and Tate Britain. The amount of money paid for Old Masters and talented painters, expanding from the 15th century to the 19th century, must have come from somewhere. And the answer lies in the history of imperialism and colonialism, in which the obsession over the blue of the British was reflected. This particular color drew European ships across the seas to mine blue pigment from Afghan rocks, establish, and impose slavery on African and South Asian people. They raised indigo (another blue color pigments for dying purposes) on stolen land with stolen labor. Oil paintings I see nowadays are the materialization of a long history of stealing other people’s land and oppressing other human lives. I have always been aware that painting commission was a luxurious good, but when diving more deeply into how a painting was created, and how the art world functioned, I was shaken to the core.

The Finding of Moses by Orazio Gentileschi

Indeed, the art world is intertwined with politics, especially the matter of class inequality. However, as Karl Marx once said: ‘Where there is oppression, there is struggle’, modern and contemporary artists have found different ways to fight against the inequality and elitism established and sustained by European art’s academicism. For example, modern painters like Millet and Edgar shifted their focus from religious and mythological figures to farmers and the working class in general. After the trip, I reflected art history lesson on Realism art movement that I had learned during the ‘Critical Frameworks’ course, and I realized how bold the Realist artists’ decisions were. At that time, departing from the studio space to ‘en plein air’ (painting outdoors), and depicting farmers instead of Jesus or Christian Saints, were controversial, yet inspiring and significant. Without them, we may not have street photography or contemporary art with strong social commentary.

Standing in galleries filled with large-scale portraits, historical, and religious paintings, I was awestruck by the technique and the sublime. At the same time, I was also amazed at how the art world has changed, allowing more people to raise their voices about urgent social matters, especially artists coming from marginalized groups. I genuinely feel the urge to contribute to this vision because I believe that art never stands alone—it is a tool to facilitate a brighter future for everyone, not just those with racial and financial privileges.

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Art by the Black

London is the city where I have encountered the most artists of color, but I would like to focus on Kelly Henry James and Joy Gregory. Surprisingly, London is the most Eurocentric and the 'whitest' city in the world, in my opinion.

Kelly James

He is the first black painter that I have encountered. Throughout my artistic experiences, I mainly encountered black photographers, installation, and performance artists. Oil painting technique is still Euro-centric, and to engage in this medium is to engage in quite a direct way with the West’s domain of expertise. But Kelly James creates a space for the Blackness canon, which has long been ignored by the Eurocentric art world, especially in oil painting.

His works are a touch of realism, surrealism, and sarcasm towards the exoticism of Western art, while deeply nuanced in both personal and collective memories of the Negro American.

For example, ‘Portrait of Nat Turner with the Head of his Master’ (2011) is a portrait of Nat Turner, reminding the audience of David with beheaded Goliath by Caravaggio. In history, Nat Turner was considered a criminal for murdering 55 white people, including his owners. Yet looking from another perspective, his murderous act could also be viewed as a heroic rebellion against slavery in the US. In parallel with Caravaggio’s painting, the story of King David beheading Goliath has always been praised as a heroic act in the Bible, but the way Caravaggio depicted the scene is barbaric and terrifying. By making a reference to Caravaggio’s David, the artist’s intention has gone beyond a connection in technique to address the matter of narrative and perspective. Who has the power to decide the ‘right and wrong’ of history?

Untitled (2012), on the other hand, reminds me of the famous The Grand Odalisque by Ingres. It is interesting to see how Kelly James exoticized the black to criticize Orientalism. The West has a long history of invading other lands, and oppressing other ethnic groups, while putting them on different types of art to satisfy their curiosity, and even to serve an entertaining purpose. I believe that the painting is a direct response to the ‘blackface’ practice in cinema, which has now been transformed into other subtle forms.

Joy Gregory

As a female artist, her works also speak to matters of gender and how femininity is also intertwined with class inequality, imperialism, and capitalism.

The Handbag Project: She collected brand-new handbags left behind by wealthy white women in South Africa after apartheid. These handbags still remained untouched until the artist collected them. They are religious relics—symbols of class inequality that is interwoven with white femininity. Sharing the same physical space, their political and social sphere is a stark contrast to those of other women of color, who were exploited to benefit their luxurious lifestyles. Using a technique fromthe 19th century called ‘salt print’, the luxurious bag now remains a silhouette on the print. Eventually, those objects and symbols of wealth are simply faint marks on the paper, but the consequences they left behind would stay in history for eternity. And for those women of color who suffered under apartheid, it could take them generations to heal those oppressive traumas.

Image credit: Joy Gregory (https://www.joygregory.co.uk/project/the-handbag-project/)

The Blonde Project: Perhaps this is the most complicated and relatable artwork to me throughout the trip. It shows me how the Western beauty standard has become a part of women from other ethnic groups. Blonde hair has always been considered a symbol of fashion, beauty, and sexiness, as it is also closely tied to pop culture figures such as Marilyn Monroe. As a Vietnamese, the obsession over blonde hair here is less severe, but I have paid attention to the obsession over ‘whiteness’ instead. Till now, a majority of Vietnamese women still believe that healthy, beautiful skin must be white, although the Vietnamese skin tone cannot be as white as the Western, except for being intervened by plastic surgery, and other ‘whitening’ technology. Globalization and the cultural hybridity/ homogenization coming with it have been crossing the internal borders of human identity and metaphysical space. The artwork resonated with me deeply because my background was in marketing, which allows me to understand how a concept, like the Blonde or the White, is sold, to encourage consumerist behaviors in capitalism. Indeed, there is a session of the project called ‘Celebrity Blonde’, in which Gregory collected locks of blonde hair from certain famous figures, then put them on sale. Since white supremacy has dominated the world’s cultural sphere, these iconographic images of the Blonde remain intact, despite the constant movement of contemporary culture and current events.

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The Curious Adventure of the Modules - An exhibition honoring Điềm Phùng Thị

"I am Vietnamese and a sculptor. By showing you my sculptures, I open myself up to you. In creating them, I shared my happiness and sufferings. These sculptures do not belong to me anymore. I leave them to you, or rather, like Bissière puts it, I leave myself to you.”

— Điềm Phùng Thị (Paris, 1967)

I visited 'The Curious Adventure of the Modules' exhibition when I came back to Vietnam during the last semester break. It was a mesmerising experience to me because it was my first time to learn about an Indochinese artist. It was surprising to me when figuring out that she was in the same generation as most well-known Vietnamese artists, including Lê Phổ, Mai Trung Thứ, and Vũ Cao Đàm. Unfortunately, her name was still relatively known to domestic audiences beyond Huế - her home town. This lack of wider recognition is a result of the absence of detailed research on her practice within the broader trajectory of Vietnamese art history. To me, it was a blessing as well as an honor to contemplate her artworks, read essays about her and watch some of her rare interview footages.

Known for her remarkable invention of a system of seven modules - flexible, scalable organic forms that could be expressed in various materials - her body of work spans an impressive breadth. There were small sculptures resembling toys, but there were also medium ones at the exhibition, showing how Điềm Phùng Thị combined these modules competently. Though not exhibited, Điềm Phùng Thị created other big statues that are still scattered all over Europe (where she learned sculpture and spent most of her life). To me, no matter the size and material, Điềm Phùng Thị's sculptures are 'cute' like dolls and toys that you can play around. Indeed, some of her public arts, placed at university campus or in a public library's garden in Europe, are dear to the heart of many children. Her statues, using only seven modules, turn a public space into a playground for everyone of every age.

'The Curious Adventure of the Modules' exhibition helps me to explore a part of Vietnamese art history that I have never heard of. It also allowed me to participate in an inter-generational conversation, where modern-day artists show their appreciation by showing audiences how her seven modules revolved through time. Furthermore, it was always interesting to contemplate a female artist's art because I am too, a female. Điềm Phùng Thị's sculptures, despite shape, size and material, are always feminine - like a mother making toys for her children. It's a kind of 'sublime' feeling that you can only feel and see the works with your own eyes, which is difficult to put into words.

Additionally, I learn a lot from the exhibition's curator - Lê Thuận Uyên. Miss Uyên shows me how an art curator can make an exhibition their essay but their voice still does not dominate the artist(s)' spirit. An art curator does not necessarily stand in the dark all the time but they can always step forwards, as long as they ignite a meaningful conversation, in which audiences can also find their places.

Bibliography

Hachul. “ Mẫu Tự Du Ký.” Hachul, 2023. https://hachul.com/mtdk/.

Trần, Đức Anh Sơn. “ĐIỀM PHÙNG THỊ, NGƯỜI TẠC TƯỢNG GIỮA ĐÔNG và TÂY.” Trần Đức Anh Sơn’s Cultural History and Scholarship Blog. WordPress, November 22, 2014. https://anhsontranduc.wordpress.com/2014/11/22/27/.

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Farewell My Concubine (1992) dir. Chen Kaige

Is the world a stage? And we are all actors and actresses, who cannot navigate ourselves in this fleeting moment?

Beginning soon after the fall of China’s last emperor and culminating in the violence and betrayal of the Cultural Revolution, the film tells the story of two childhood friends whose tortured bond is tested by one of the most tragic and tumultuous periods in Chinese history. There are plenty of themes underlying the tragic fate of Cheng Dieyi (aka Douzi - the main character): homosexuality, suicide, opium addiction, and the Cultural Revolution, which have been banned for quite a long time in China.

The film tells the story of Douzi (later becoming an adult, he is called Cheng Dieyi), left at a Beijing opera school by his mother, who couldn't longer raise him at the brothel where she works. The boy befriends a brawnier schoolmate, Shitou (as an adult called Duan Xiaolou). Facing the cruelty and physical abuse from their teachers, the boys' care and affection for each other is the only thing that keeps them human. As they mature, Dieyi is trained for female characters, while Xiaolou is responsible for heroic roles, all of which are played by men. As adults, they gain great fame for their performance in the classic Beijing opera Farewell My Conbucine, in which Xiaolou plays the warrior Xiang Yu, while Dieyi plays Xiang Yu's beloved concubine, Lady Yu. While Xiaolou can distinguish between reality and opera, Dieyi truly wishes to live out with Xiaolou the story of lifelong fidelity that the two perform onstage. When Xiaolou marries the prostitute Juxian, ironically, Juxian becomes the only one who understands Dieyi's eternal love for traditional opera despite having been his rival at first.

Dieyi's burning wish to spend his whole life performing with Xiaolou, creates the central conflict of the film, setting him at odds with Xiaolou and more importantly, the shifting political environment around him. He craves someone, who can understand his art and undying love for traditional art. Thus, he would perform for anyone, any audience that can cherish him even enemies of his nation. As long as he can play the role of Xiaoyu and have Xiang Yu by his side, it does not matter who are clapping and cheering in front of him. The love for opera blinds Dieyi from reality and at the same time forces him to impose the female identity on himself. Dieyi is lost in the realm that blurs the boundary between reality and stage. His identity is broken into fragments but his pure love for Beijing opera still shines the brightest light. At the end of the movie, when Dieyi and Xiaolou have their final performance of Farewell My Concubine, Dieyi finally sees the complexities and contradictions beneath the opera, the violence and suffering behind the art. It is when he makes his performance truly his own, embracing all of his tragedies, for the first time in his life.

Every time I watch this movie, I cry. It's a powerful story of protecting the love for traditional art in tumultuous times; of how a form of art signifies the woman through the transvestite role; and how love for the stage/ unreality can break one's soul.

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47 days soundless - Nguyễn Trinh Thi

47 Days Soundless is an imagining narrative of a wanderer, who lost himself in a forest without any clues. Challenging the dominance of vision in cinematic storytelling, the work encourages us to rethink our senses of moving images. The visuals in 47 Days are what Trinh Thi identifies as “peripheries,” primarily natural landscapes used as backdrops and uncredited characters and soundtracks from American and Vietnamese movies filmed in Southeast Asia. Trinh Thi considers this technique a part of 'expanded cinema', in which the peripheral objects are placed in the centre while the central objects or characters are pushed into the background.

In the exhibited room's centre, Trinh Thi installs a mirror system, reflecting some fragments from the movie shown on two channels onto the walls, enabling new perceptions of the relationship between a land and its people.

47 Days reverts the hierarchy of Hollywood movies placing their focus on the Vietnam War. Interestingly, most of them are produced in the Philippines or Thailand because these countries have quite similar natural landscapes to Vietnam. 47 Days reposition the natural landscape and the extras to the foreground. The sound editing also emphasises the background noises, which, in Trinh Thi's opinion, reflects a place's geography, life and memories. It's an act of decolonisation, where the knowledge and living experiences of Indigenous people are put in the centre. In the 47 Days' plot, the lost wanderer also struggled to find his memories back and the local people helped him to recover his memories through their rituals, which borrowed spiritual power from nature. I believe that if we - modern-day Vietnamese people - wish to refigure our origins and ancestors' memories, we need to find them in nature, in the stories of geography.

It was fascinating for me to watch 47 Days Soundless at Manzi Art Space, Hanoi because similar to Trinh Thi, I also pursue an art practice of decoloniality. Indeed, Trinh Thi has disturbed the hierarchy of the European legacy of knowledge production (particularly in film production such as the Hollywood empire), which is deeply intertwined with colonial power structures.

47 Days Soundless (2024), installation and video art on two channels, Nguyễn Trinh Thi.

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On Our Own Strength: The Self-Reliant Literary Group and Cosmopolitan Nationalism in Late Colonial Vietnam

This book, by Martina Thucnhi Nguyen, offers me an alternative way to look at Vietnamese literature and Vietnamese history during the late colonial era. Although writers from The Self-Reliant Literary Group, notably Thạch Lam, Khái Hưng, Nhất Linh, Hoàng Đạo, now receive the recognition they have always deserved, they are considered 'out-of-touch bourgeois elites' as their novels feature romanticism. Martina's research offers readers an alternative view of the group, who not only engaged with professional writing (which means writing novels as a vocation) but also political activism of their time.

Their influence was evident in various aspects: fashion, journalism, publishing, literature and politics. Martina has carefully analysed the Group's ideology and political, societal activities on Phong Hóa newspapers as well as their establishment of League of Light (Đoàn Ánh Sáng). Some of their ideas were ahead of time. For example, Khái Hưng (also known as Nhị Linh) emphasised the importance of book cover design and printing quality when discussing the mission of Đời Nay publication house. He believed that a book's quality had to go along with its appearance. Only when the printing quality and the publishing sector were elevated, the people's intellectual standards could improve. It is one of many radical ideas of the Group that Martina analysed in her book, all of which enlightened me about how intellectuals during the late colonial era fought for an independent Vietnam.

Some works of Đời Nay publication house

To me, the book is also about how the grand narrative of Vietnamese history has been framed by the Communist government's propaganda. The Self-Reliant Literary Group is associated with negative adjectives such as 'ideologically romantic', 'unrealistic', 'detached from the revolutionary ideology', and 'bourgeois elites'. But in fact, they organized several activities from publishing to founding a public housing philanthropic organisation to promote cosmopolitan nationalism, which promotes the idea that Vietnam must stand on its own, instead of relying on any foreign forces. And to achieve such a goal, cultural development is bound to political activism. As a Vietnamese child born in the peaceful era, understanding the national history is a step toward better self-realization. Furthermore, in the complicated political context of Vietnam today, where my country struggles to balance out its relationships with powerful countries like China and the US as well as strives for higher and higher GDP every year, learning lessons from history has become more important than ever. Above all, as my art practice centres on the idea of Vietnamese-ness, it is important to be critical of the government's political acts because the national identity is bound to the state's identity; on the other hand, my practice encourages me to dive into neglected aspects and characters of the national history.

Bibliography

Đình Ba Trần, “Phía Sau Trang Sách: Vang Danh Những Dòng Sách,” Thanh Niên (Thanh Niên, April 24, 2022), https://thanhnien.vn/phia-sau-trang-sach-vang-danh-nhung-dong-sach-1851451607.htm.

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Perfect Blue (1997) dir. Satoshi Kon - When your identity crumbles, you will find yourself.

Perfect Blue is a special movie to me because every time I watch it, I learn new things from Satoshi Kon's masterpiece. It has a touch of surrealism, merging fantasy and reality, which makes the audience unable to distinguish between reality and Mima's innate world. Things start getting absurd when Mima gives up her idol career to become an actress. Being unable to look at herself as an idol or an actress, Mima has hallucinations of her second self - the Mima idol persona - which appears more and more frequently until she dares to confront herself by stabbing Rumi.

Once Mima idol is brought into existence, surreal logic begins to dominate the world of Perfect Blue. For instance, there is a sequence where Mima stands under stage lights, in front of a cheering audience that seems not to be really there. Our perception of time, space and reality is warped because the line between fantasy and reality has been violated by masses of fans who have willed, the fantasy of Mima idol into reality, by sheer obsession. Mima wishes to have a more successful career, which means giving up the past of an idol. However, reaching the success of an actress is no easy pathway and the past, once a safe place for Mima, now becomes a threat, a ghost that haunts her for ruining the innocence of an idol to become an actress. Therefore, Mima idol serves as a metaphor for the real-life dangers of escapist art. She is the thematic embodiment of loss of identity, the murderous obsession of crazy fans, a narrative that is dissociated from reality. These dangers are ever more present in the internet age. when everyone, including crazed fans, has access to tools that enable stalking, harassment, objectification and dehumanization.

To me, Perfect Blue shows how surrealism and a smooth transition between reality and fantasy can confuse our perception. But at the same time, it can raise a lot of curiosity and amaze us in different ways. Perfect Blue also teaches me how to look at artwork that confronts the question of identity: they could be like Mima - going through pain and grief as if the world had crumbled in front of them, but they could always find themselves.

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Đỗ Thanh Lãng

During the last semester break in Vietnam, I attended an exhibition in Saigon, featuring Đỗ Thanh Lãng (Do Thanh Lang). Do’s paintings take viewers to ambiguous places inhabited by anonymous characters often engaged in some sort of absurdity, which sometimes features violent or disturbing acts of transgression playing out, where we normally hide from outsiders to create a persona, meeting society’s expectations. Seemingly playful scenes unfold against a backdrop of bright colors and shiny surfaces. Do Thanh Lang often finds visual sources from the internet and news media and then transposes the images to imagined (non)locales. The scenes are not as whimsical as they initially seem but are filled with tension that seeps through the layers of paint and resin.

Untitled (2024), acrylic, oil, epoxy resin on canvas

Untitled (2024), acrylic, oil, epoxy resin on canvas

Bringing out a sense of surrealism, lingering between the human mind and cyberspace, His focus on the violence and desire, hindered in each individual in a world where we are all somehow suppressed by social norms of being a ‘decent’ person, especially due to the indispensable intertwining between media and real life, made him a Realist artist to me. Perhaps, we all have some unexplainable, twisted desires that we need to fight daily. And perhaps, we are all floating through this world, somewhere in between the real world and the virtual world like Do's featured figures.

Bibliography

Galerie Quynh, “Đỗ Thanh Lãng,” Galerie Quynh Contemporary Art, 2024, https://www.galeriequynh.com/vn/artists/32-do-thanh-lang/.

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Nguyễn Huy An's "Nguyên âm" (Vowels) - Could the sound be embodied?

The installation ‘A Ă Â…’ (2014) emerged from a process of language deconstruction by disassembling and fragmenting it to restore alphabetical letters of the Vietnamese language to their most primal form before they were turned into messages and slogans. The artist collected and isolated these characters from slogans painted on the walls of cultural hubs in Nothern Vietnamese villages, many of which had disappeared later on. Known for his multidisciplinary approach to art, Nguyễn Huy An did not restrict himself to a single medium. He expanded ‘Nguyên âm’ with two additional installation works — ‘Thanh âm’ (Sound) and ‘Ký âm’ (Transcribe) in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Despite being born after a decade, the later works shared a unified voice with the first one, engaging in a multifaceted dialogue with one another and provoking a consistent stream of thoughts. This continuity reflected Nguyễn Huy An’s deep focus on materials closely tied to memory, heritage and the historical currents of life. In ‘Thanh âm’, the presence of two iconic songs, Tiến về Sài Gòn and Tiến về Hà Nội, was materialized into 255 copper bars. This resonated with the solemn atmosphere in the Children’s Palace’s traditional room and in particular, photographs of President Hồ Chí Minh conducting the youth orchestra. Although the traditional room was quiet, echoes of melodies belonging to a heroic part of history seemed to linger, as if the memories of the Children’s Palace had neither been buried nor frozen by time. The final piece, ‘Ký âm’ was the artist’s fruit after he visited numerous historical monuments, where he recorded deeply personal inquiries. Ultimately, he endeavored to ‘transcribe’ both audible and inaudible memories through a process of striking and listening, distilling them into a highly musical language. According to the essay The Rhetoric of Absence in Contemporary Art, the absence of a component or even the artwork itself can evoke greater resonance than a tangible piece. While tied to the void, absence can open up countless possibilities: fear and anxiety toward emptiness, curiosity toward the work’s original context, the simultaneous presence of artists and their creation as they become a part of their artwork’s body, and more. Through a practice that blends the visible and invisible, the audible and inaudible, the material and immaterial, Nguyễn Huy An has stirred up unique emotional waves in the audience, in harmony with the life rhythm of the Children’s Palace. Although his works were outwardly straightforward, they harbored a depth of thought that was both profound and universal.

A Ă Â…, installation art, Nguyễn Huy An.

Bibliography

Nguyen Art Foundation, “A Ă Â… ,” Nguyenartfoundation.com, 2025, https://nguyenartfoundation.com/artwork/a-a-a/.

[arneyarchiveofthoughts]

Frida Kahlo and the Embodiment of Pain

I visited Frida Kahlo: In her own image exhibition at Bendigo Art Gallery a few weeks ago, which soon became one of the most artistic experiences of mine. I expected the exhibition to be full of Kahlo's works; however, the exhibition focused on revealing personal aspects of Kahlo's life. Portrait photographs, photos, and videos of Kahlo and her friends, pages of diaries, personal objects, outfits, etc, from Kahlo's home in Mexico accounted for most of the exhibition' objects. There were only three paintings. But it was her personal stuff, like clothing, make-up, and medical items, that fascinated me most.

Kahlo showed that an artist's ultimate mission is meaning-making. Despite her lifelong struggle with her health, which resulted in the amputation of her right leg as well as her dependence on corsets to support her spine, she created artworks right at the centre of suffering.

“They want to hurt my pride by cutting a leg off […] (damned thing, it got what it wanted in the end). I told you I’ve counted myself as incomplete for a long time, but why the fuck does everybody else need to know about it too? Now my fragmentation will be obvious for everyone to see, for you to see…”– Letter from Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera, 1953. 

Pain does not restrain Kahlo from creating art. In contrast, it embodies and engenders an impactful as well as unique art practice. Kahlo's art is unique. She is willing to portray her vulnerability truthfully, sparking recognition and awe in the audience's eyes because everyone could sense her authenticity. As a result, Kahlo left behind an important legacy on body politics, opening a new narrative surrounding disabilities, where art, medical issues, and science can be juxtaposed in one united space.

Bibiography

Johathan Jones, “Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self up Review – Forget the Paintings, Here’s Her False Leg,” The Guardian, June 12, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jun/12/frida-kahlo-making-her-self-up-review-v-and-a-london.

[arneyarchiveofthoughts]

Three colours: Blue (1993) dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski

Three colours: Blue is a fascinating film about how a person deals with grief and loss. But once people can overcome their grief, they can achieve genuine liberty. The name of the film—blue—originating from the three colours on the French national flag represents liberty. Only when we are able to face the loss, we can overcome the challenges of grief, thus gaining liberty or freedom for our souls.

Julie de Courcy is the protagonist, who lost her husband and her daughter in a car accident. At first, she tried her best to erase all trace of her former life with her husband, Patrice, who was a famous and successful classical composer. He was commissioned to compose a concerto namely ‘Song for the Unification of Europe’. After several efforts to remove the persona of her previous life (before her husband and daughter passed away), she threw herself into isolationism. In this decisive isolationism, she wished to be no longer dependent on any male partner or bound to any family unit. But at that very moment, the injured self of Julie could only be healed by facing her past and the music was the medium. Whenever the music struck Julie’s mind, the whole screen and her whole body were infused with blue light, implying that she was still innately struggling with grief and even imprisoning herself.

The film’s cinematography is poetic and rich with symbolism. The lighting arrangement and composition is flawless. Sławomir Idziak (the cinematographer of the film) combined the lighting and the sound in a symbolically harmonious manner. Whenever the music appeared, Julie was immersed in blue light. This harmony between the lighting and the music led the audience and Julie to a limbo, where Julie was isolated in her own thoughts. We usually think of music as a type of escapism; however, the music here in Three Colors: Blue forced Julie to face her grief instead of distracting her from the cruel reality.

The film also has some marvellous close-up shots. For instance, when Julie was at a cafe and orders her regular drink, there was a shot of an angle of the coffee cup, caught in the soft sunlight. We could see the shadow slowly moving, implying a day was passing by though we did not know it was afternoon, dawn, or evening. We, as a viewer, probably have a strong sense of time passing but Julie seemed not to have the same feeling to us as if she was zoned out in her timeless emptiness.

Another stunning close-up shot is that the sugar cube changed from white to blue when it was slightly dipped in the coffee. Personally, this scene represented how Julie condensed all of her feeling and her inner thoughts in a sugar cube so that the immediate environment could protect her from her innate struggles. Indeed, in a documentary by Dominique Rabourdin, Krzysztof Kieślowski (the film’s director) shared that “only the sugar cube matters and she intentionally focuses on it to shut out all the things she doesn’t accept”. This scene also matches the idea I previously presented: the immersive music and blue lighting are no escapism but forcing her to face her past, while the surrounding environment pulls Julie from her floating and timeless isolationism.

In general, the pace of the film is quite slow, which allows the audience to examine every slight change in a scene such as Julie’s facial expression. The slow pace accurately depicts the journey of a person overcoming loss. There must be denial, avoidance, pain, sadness, and bliss. Kieslowski's unconventional use of fade-to-black editing also has important symbolism. When the concerto appeared at disquieting moments, there were flashbacks constantly reminded of Julie’s decisions as well as her person in the past. Afterwards, like at the end of a scene, everything faded to black then faded back in but Julie was still there, trying to deal with her memories. The fading to black here represents how Julie constantly avoided memories, blocking them out but her mind kept bringing them back. It was a different purpose from fading to black’s conventional goal: to represent the passage of time. The cinematography and sound techniques also create a sense of dislocation and emphasise the sense of loss. Even the music, specifically, the concerto has an interesting symbol. The concerto – a work of an orchestra, which is defined by unity, is constantly juxtaposed with a dislocated and alienated Julie. Here, we could see the most important message of Three Colors: Blue – only by accepting love and living in unity with other people around us, we can conquer the challenges of grief and loss, thus reaching liberty for our emotions. We can also see this message when Julie makes love with Olivier at the end of the movie - an act of accepting his romantic love for her.

[arneyarchiveofthoughts]

Painters in Hanoi

One of the most inspirational persons recommended this book, and I fell in love with it from the very first pages. Paints in Hanoi covers a comprehensive approach to understand the history of modern Vietnamese art., including the colonial era (1925—45); revolution and resistance (1945—75); postwar reunification (1975—96); and the open market (Đổi Mới era) since 1986.

Nora Taylor did not only reflect important changing contexts of Vietnamese art due to complicated historical and political matters, but also critically pay attention to the ‘Vietnamese-ness’ in a globalized context. She achieved this by extensively reading and conducting interviews with artists, investigating their diaries and memories. Her proactive participation in and observations of the Hanoian art landscape also contributed to such a comprehensive understanding of Vietnamese art.

This book gives me an all-inclusive introduction to the history of Vietnamese art (visual arts in particular), enabling me to understand more about the motivations and concerns inside Vietnamese art communities that may long lived throughout the history of modern art. Painters in Hanoi: An Ethnography of Vietnamese Art also aligns with my creative practice’s core concern: What makes a Vietnamese artist?. The Vietnamese-ness, outwardly, is challenged in a globalized context, where neo-liberalism has been holding solid ground, but inwardly, is outrageously tightened to nationalism. By reading the chapter about Bui Xuan Phai, my research in the curatorial career is inspired to find a new way to portray the Vietnamese-nese in my home country’s art without framing them in nationalism and the compulsory pride in Vietnamese history of fighting against imperial invaders.

[arneyarchiveofthoughts]

To navigate ourselves in the material and immaterial

Dmarc Lê

Xác âm

2024

Exhibited at Vietnam Festival of Creativity and Design

“Xác âm” (roughly translated to ‘A left body of words’) by Dmarc Lê, a Vietnamese designer. I encountered this installation artwork during the Vietnam Festival of Creativity and Design last year.

He printed a poem, namely “Lạc” (Lost) on a piece of metal. Dmarc used a system call ASJP to measure the weight of every sound. When you hear someone speak in Vietnamese, you can feel some types of syllable may have their own weight because Vietnamese language has a system of marking, which creates different tones when words or syllables come out of your mouth. Since Vietnam has many regions, there are a variety of dialects. I, myself, am not confident that I can understand the Vietnamese spoken in the western region. So in general, with the standard system of marks, varied by dialects, Vietnamese language can have hundreds of different weights.

Using ASJP, Dmarc can measure the weight of the sound by contemplating the movement of teeth, lips and vocal chord. After measuring his own voice when reading the poem out loud, he used the data from ASJP to create a matrix on the piece of metal. Finally, he exposed the metal under high heat. Which word that has a higher weight would be exposed in a longer period of time than other ones.

He kept the physical body of the poem in the natural environment for about 3 months, letting the poem corrode itself.

The process of creating 'A left body of words'

Dmarc Le, 2025

The convergence of technology, language, and creativity inspired Dmarc Le to create this artwork. It really changed the way the audience perceives a poem. Back then, I only had a different way of looking at my mother tongue, but now, after the New Realism lecture, I felt it raised the question of how we construct the real. Language (except when written or using sign language) is invisible but can construct meaning and the basis of our understanding. But when it became a tangible object like Dmarc did with the poem, using the metal as a medium, it reconstructed (or changed) the audience’s understanding of Vietnamese language again: that language can have weight like physical objects. Here is the point we see that crash between two poles of the Cartesian-alike dualism: if we can feel language through the body like feeling some certain words are heavier than others by looking at how their position has more curves, is language able to reconstruct our perception of mother tongue again? Or even something further like our identity because mother tongue definitely has a strong bond with everyone of us. Imagine that something you can only hear and process in your cognitive system now has a physical body, and you can feel the weight, thanks to the high heat it was exposed to. The language even dies because now you can only look at its dead body.

In 'A left body of words', we can witness the coming together of language and materiality. So come back to the question, I think the real can be perceived and processed through both language and the physical body’s experiences. They are intertwined with each other, and it’s difficult to demonstrate or prove which one appeared first and led to another, especially when our technology has flourished to a point that we can materialize intangible objects/ concepts.

Bibliography

Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.

Heller, Michel. “Descartes on the Body-Mind Split.” Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy 16, no. 3 (January 26, 2021): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/17432979.2020.1864777.

Lê, Dmarc. “A Recap on Xác Âm | a Left Body of Words.” Instagram, 2025. https://www.instagram.com/p/DHqt6zXS8v_/?img_index=4.

[arneyarchiveofthoughts]

A voyage into sediments of time

Phan Thảo Nguyên's Tropical Siesta investigates countless possibilities of how we could live with legacy with two artworks that were full of contemplations and introspections on our history and future in the form of a video art presented on two channels. In her short film, Phan Thảo Nguyên mentioned the fact that only people in tropical areas have a siesta. Perhaps when setting a siesta as the main theme, Phan could build a series of surreal and fragmented scenes because it might be possible for us to find a rational and logical dream. The children featured in her film had been taken out of their daily lives and our usual sense of reality. They became artistic notations, symbols, and metaphors to lead the audience into the world of new contemplations when we reinvestigated our history through children’s eyes.

Phan Thao Nguyen, Tropical Siesta, 2017

Two narratives appearing in the short firm, including one about the daily life of Alexandre de Rhodes primary school and one about a Chinese goddess expelled to An Nam, were shown on two co-presented screens, bringing out the sense of distinctive parallel timelines and spaces. Through them, we could revisit our nation’s history through the innocent lens of children. Therefore, the audience’s judgment of the collective history suddenly got out of the binary modality of the right and wrong, the good and bad. After all, questions that kept echoing in the audience’s mind (whether there could be an absolute answer or not) were: To what extent was our knowledge of our own history accurate? How many stories were compelled into silence under the sediment of time and the overlaps of the higher, more powerful institutions? It was still unclear to us whether by chance or intention Phan Thảo Nguyên’s work was placed in the Brass and Drum Practice Room at the Children’s Palace (*). As if the haunting, mournful flute in the short film wished to resonate with the familiar brass and drum sounds of the National Anthem in every Monday morning flag salute session. As if the midday nap on a tiny school desk from our primary school years suddenly merged with the siesta of the Annamese children.

The audience and those children might share a similar dream in only 13 minutes, similar to the way Zhuang Zhou fell into a dream where he was a butterfly, flitting and fluttering around. When stepping out of the screening room, plenty of renewed emotions blossomed in the audience’s hearts — perhaps a sense of suffocation, lingering contemplation, or a haze of uncertainty, much like Zhuang Zhou questioning whether he was truly Zhuangzi or the butterfly when waking from the dream. Yet, no matter what those emotions might be, it was certain that ‘Tropical Siesta’ had fulfilled the duty of art: ‘Art transcends selfish and obsessive limitations of personality and can enlarge the sensibility of its consumer.’ (Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good)

Note: Children's Palace is the heart of the Hanoi Festival of Creativity and Design 2024, where Phan Thảo Nguyên's Tropical Siesta was exhibited. In the eyes of the Hanoian, Children's Palace is a 'cultural center' for the young, where they can have extra curriculum classes. Established in 1946, the Children's Palace has undergone several milestones, growing up with Hanoi itself and contributing countless joys to many generations' childhoods.

[arneyarchiveofthoughts]

Lại Diệu Hà’s complexities with pain and the female body

Hurt in here

2010

Lại Diệu Hà

Performance art; Sculpture – dried pork skin used in original performance, acrylic box

Hurt in here is one of the most controversial and well-known performance artworks by Lại Diệu Hà, which is also remembered for its sociality. Before diving into the work, I have to note that pork skin is one of the crucial elements of her practice, which has been featured in her several performances. Ten years ago, Hurt in here remarked on the pork skin’s debut, which soon became a part of Lại Diệu Hà’s language to express her complexities with pain as well as being a woman in the contemporary Vietnamese art landscape. As the heat exuding from the iron came in contact with the damp pork skin, the artist pressed it onto her own skin, causing heat burns and hurting her own body.

Through an extreme approach that experiments with the artist’s own body and sense, I can feel sympathy between Lại Diệu Hà and the female pork, which she also stated in a conversation with me in Vietnam in 2024 — 13 years after the performance in Nguyen Art Foundation. The female pig also takes care of her ‘children’, which causes her a lot of effort, and eventually sacrifices her own skin, even flesh and blood to serve the human. Lại Diệu Hà may think that her life is reflected in the life cycle of a female pig. The artist has to fulfill the mission of a mother, sacrifices her own flesh and blood to serve the audience in her performances, yet still receives criticism and suffers from prejudices about being a woman. In Vietnamese, we commonly compare one’s stupidity to a pig and women are usually considered less intelligent than men, which inspires Lại Diệu Hà to use pork skin to expose the judgment, imposition, and suppression born from the prejudice of Vietnamese society. Indeed, in a country that is heavily influenced by Confucianism, Vietnamese culture has perceived men as superior to women for a long time as a part of the gender bias.

Nevertheless, when we look deeper into Hurt in here, through slices made of protein, keratin, elastin and collagen, we are reminded that both the pork and the artist are living entities. Hurt in here is not meant to create a public stunt, despite its shocking elements, but rather a sacred ritual. After applying the pork skin to her skin, Lại Diệu Hà dipped both into the cool water to soothe the pain, peeled the burned skin off, and then wrapped them in the pork skin. Her last step in the performance was flat ironing as a way to restore the balance between the human realm and nature and materialize the ultimate connection between the artist and the subject. It was then I could see Lại Diệu Hà’s true aim: to honor the life of a woman, deserving respect for its dares to sacrifice, and deserving to be freed from all judgment and imposition (Vietnam Contemporary Art Database n.d.).

Thanks to Hurt in here and direct sharing from the artist, I learned that female artists tend to fight against the social oppression through ‘feminine’ choice of materials, which are things that are usually associated with ‘feminine’ activities such as cooking. In this case, Lại Diệu Hà chose the pork skin — a material that is ugly and even gory also as a way to encounter the prejudgment that female artists should only create bright, decorative, ‘feminine in the common sense’ arts. A female artist can still honor life and femininity through complexities of pain and body, and ‘ugly’ material, as long as viewers can feel a great vigor underneath the tangible slices of life.

Bibliography

Diệu Hà, Lại. 2010. Hurt in here. Performance art. Nguyen Art Foundation.

Nguyễn Art Foundation. 2010. “Đau ở Đây.” Nguyen Art Foundation. 2010. https://nguyenartfoundation.com/vn/artwork/dau-o-day-3/.

Vietnam Contemporary Art Database. n.d. “Hurt in Here.” VCAD - Vietnam Contemporary Art Database. Accessed March 5, 2025. https://vcad.org.vn/artworks/hurt-in-here-2/.

Vu, Mai Trang, and Thi Thanh Thuy Pham. 2021. “Still in the Shadow of Confucianism? Gender Bias in Contemporary English Textbooks in Vietnam.” Pedagogy, Culture & Society 31 (3): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2021.1924239.