Internationally recognized for her combined use of painting, moving image, and sculpture, the Vietnamese artist Thao Nguyen Phan creates dreamlike and poetic narratives that trace the history of her country in relation to contemporary environmental and social changes. The exhibition, conceived as a layering of audio, visual, and tactile references among videos, sculptures, watercolors, silk and lacquer paintings, explores Phan’s practice, highlighting its symbolic and imaginative qualities. For the occasion, the artist has created a series of new productions and presents for the first time the video installation Reincarnations of Shadows (moving-image-poem) (2023): a personal reflection on the transformative and regenerative potential of art.
Thao Nguyen Phan studied painting at Ho Chi Minh University of Fine Arts, Lasalle College of Arts in Singapore and at the School of Arts Institute of Chicago and was later introduced to the moving image through the filmic works of authors such as the Japanese director Yasujir? Ozu (1903–63), Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (1970), and Joan Jonas (1936), the American pioneer of video and performance. Phan thus begins to develop a visual language in which pictorial matter, acting as a conceptual, narrative, and connective element, combines with different media and supports, from textiles to printed books. In her videos, painting comes alive, creating a dreamlike imagery in which folk traditions, fairy-tale narratives, literature, philosophy, and everyday life merge. The artist traces Vietnam’s turbulent historical events, reflecting on environmental and social changes related to human impact, such as the exploitation of natural resources and the destruction and colonization of the landscape.
The solo show—the first dedicated to Thao Nguyen Phan by an Italian institution—includes new productions and presents a series of installations, watercolors, sculptures, and videos by immersing the visitors in the artist’s delicate oeuvre. The title of the exhibition takes its cue from the new video, Reincarnations of Shadows (moving-image-poem) (2023), commissioned by Pirelli HangarBicocca and co-produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film. Delving into the figure of artist Diem Phung Thi (1920–2002)—one of the first Vietnamese modernist women sculptors who lived and worked between France and Vietnam—the video reflects on the social meanings of art history and architecture and the intergenerational relationships between women artists in post-colonial contexts. Phan questions the possibilities for the reincarnation and re-signification of hidden symbols, gestures and rituals that have remained in the shadows, passed down through whispered oral narratives and often overpowered by the lingering effects of colonialism.
The idea of reincarnation pervades all of the artist’s work, partly due to the presence of recurring visual and sound elements. As Phan herself states, “The more I work with moving images, the more I feel like moving images, or art-making in general, has this ability to reincarnate.” Through an approach reminiscent of the Buddhist religion, the artist does not seek conclusive goals or results in her practice, but turns each project into a kind of living organism that can readjust, mold and take on new forms. Thus, the exhibition “Reincarnations of Shadows” transforms the space of the Shed at Pirelli HangarBicocca into a fluid environment in which sounds, images, and narratives combine in a journey between the past, present, and future, dealing in a broader sense with the spiritual heritage of Vietnam’s history in a mixture of personal and collective memories.
The exhibition is divided into two communicating and permeable areas: the first traces the artist’s career from a new perspective through the overlay of canvases, screens, and moving images. The visitors are confronted with the central themes of Phan’s practice: the relationship between humans and nature; the colonization of Vietnam and its social transformations; the cultural intermingling of East and West, tradition and modernity, locality and globality; and the combination of memory, folklore, and myth to create collective narratives as an alternative to the official historical accounts imposed by dominant political forces. In Becoming Alluvium (2019–ongoing), an installation composed of a video and a series of lacquer paintings and watercolor-on-silk paintings, the artist investigates the economic and social role of the Mekong River for the Southeast Asian region through a fable-like, surreal narrative. The story of two brothers and their successive reincarnations interweaves multiple perspectives on nature, love, and consumption, becoming a metaphor for human exploitation of the environment and its potential for regeneration.
The visitor is invited to walk through the large installation, No Jute Cloth for the Bones (2019–23), composed of suspended raw jute stalks, to access the second part of the exhibition. The work is a reference to the Great Famine that occurred during the Japanese occupation of French Indochina between 1940 and 1945, largely caused by the transformation of rice fields into jute plantations. This historical episode is also personally reinterpreted by the artist in the three-channel video, Mute Grain (2019), in which the collective trauma is retraced through the blending of folktales and photographic archives, mixed with fantastical imagery with a decisive poetic force. The second environment is dedicated to the new production that gives the exhibition its title, “Reincarnations of Shadows.” Accompanied by a selection of Diem Phung Thi’s sculptural works from the 1970s-90s—which inspire the exhibition’s seating and display tables—the video installation celebrates the career of this artist, a fundamental figure to the history of Vietnamese Modernism.
at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan
until January 14, 2024