OPENING KEYNOTE

Apr 13, 2023 7:30PM - 11PM

Art Labor

The vibrations of forms of water - molecules of hydrogen - can shift both a terrain and a social structure and thus the politics of the local. In the folklore of the Jrai people, one of the ethnic minority groups living in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, whom we have been collaborating with, the water movement into “in-between” forms – the "trans" – indicates the landscape and the environment's changes, from rivers and underground spring streams, dew drops, summer breezes, to natural disasters.

In the keynote, Art Labor will immersively recreate JUA - a state/field of water moving in the air and will share thoughts, activities, and resonances of this “water thought” in the village community, including human and all living beings, revealing the relationships, imaginativeness, and challenges.

Art Labor is an artist collective based in Ho Chi Minh City, working in between visual arts, social and life sciences in various public contexts and locales.

The collective does not produce artwork but develop many-year-long journeys during which one inspiration is a seed to cultivate. The seed grows – the inspiration expands and bears into rhizome of projects and artworks.

A photograph from Art Labor’s interactive installation CRACK (2019), a sculpture made from edible wafer.

Art Labor

  • Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran, artist and curator

    Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran is an art laborer based in Saigon. She makes art collectively and individually, curates, and writes. Her artworks blend politics and sci-fi aesthetics through the assemblages of animation, 3D design, historical archives, and architecture to create a non-linear and absurd reading of modern histories that question the dominant post-Cold War narratives about the Third World. Her works have been exhibited at Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, and Staatliche Kunstsamlungen Dresden.

    She is the Director & Curator of the Post Vidai collection and was a fellow of Synapse, HKW, Berlin; Art in Networks, TU Dresden, Germany; and at the Asian Art Museum SF. She was awarded Fulbright Scholarship to pursue graduate study at CalArts.

  • Thao Nguyen Phan, artist

    Trained as a painter, Phan is a multimedia artist whose practice encompasses video, painting and installation. Drawing from literature, philosophy and daily life, Phan observes ambiguous issues in social conventions and history. She started working in film when she began her MFA in Chicago. Phan exhibits internationally, with solo and group exhibitions including WIELS (Brussels, 2020), Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai, 2019); Lyon Biennale (Lyon, 2019); Sharjah Biennial (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2019); Gemäldegalerie (Berlin, 2018); Dhaka Art Summit (2018); Para Site (Hong Kong, 2018); Factory Contemporary Art Centre (Ho Chi Minh City, 2017); Nha San Collective (Hanoi, 2017); and Bétonsalon (Paris, 2016), among others. She was shortlisted for the 2019 Hugo Boss Asia Art Award.

    In addition to her work as a multimedia artist, she is co-founder of the collective Art Labor, which explores cross disciplinary practices and develops art projects that benefit the local community. Thao Nguyen Phan is expanding her “theatrical fields”, including what she calls performance gesture and moving images. Phan is a 2016-2017 Rolex Protégée, mentored by internationally acclaimed, New York-based, performance and video artist, Joan Jonas.

  • Trương Công Tùng, artist

    Born in 1986, Trương Công Tùng grew up in Dak Lak among various ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands, Vietnam. He graduated from the Ho Chi Minh Fine Arts University in 2010, majoring in lacquer painting. With research interests in science, cosmology and philosophy, Trương Công Tùng works with a range of media, including video, installation, painting and found objects, which reflect personal contemplations on the cultural and geopolitical shifts of modernization, as embodied in the morphing ecology, belief or mythology of a land. He is also a member of Art Labor (founded in 2012), a collective working between visual art and social/life sciences to produce alternative non-formal knowledge via artistic and cultural activities in various public contexts and locales.

    Trương Công Tùng has exhibited extensively in Vietnam and abroad as a solo artist and as part of Art Labor Collective. Select recent exhibitions include Bangkok Art Biennale (2018), "Between Fragmentation and Wholeness" at Galerie Quynh in Ho Chi Minh City (2018), "A Beast, a God, and a Line" at Para Site, Hong Kong (2018) and Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2018), Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka (2018), Carnegie International 57th edition at Carnegie Museum of Art (2018), Cosmopolis at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017).

Cloud Chamber:
Central Highland Journey

Commissioned by Para Site, Hong Kong and T:> Works, Singapore

“Cloud Chamber”, first institutional exhibition of Art Labor and collaborators at Para Site, showcases the rich cultural heritage of Vietnam’s Central Highlands through the work of Jrai artists, Art Labor collective and contemporary artists inspired by the region.

The project, first activated during the “Cloud Chamber: Central Highlands Journey” in July 2024, included remarkable wood-carved sculptures by Jrai artists, musical instruments created by Jrai musician R Cham Tih, commissioned by Para Site and T:>Works.

These public gatherings, outdoor installations, and live performances vividly captured the essence of the Central Highlands.

Read more about “Cloud Chamber” here.