Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran
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The Spinning Shadows No. 3
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An internationally recognized architect, Ngo Viet Thu (1927-2000) was awarded the coveted Grand Prix de Rome in 1966. In 1960, he visited Manila and presented an exhibition with the aid of the South Vietnamese embassy and then first Lady of the Philippines, Leonila Garcia. Thu’s rarely seen artwork – presented as reproductions in Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran’s collage Bare Optimism – received glowing reviews from canonical modern Filipino artists such as Fernando Zobel and Arturo Luz who praised his work for belonging to both the East and West and for “acknowledging the past but facing the future.” Arlette’s collage has interpreted this history and transversed its context. She includes an image of President Johnson’s wife and President Kennedy’s sister visiting the site of the Independence Palace in the early 1960s. Thu’s iconic work of Vietnamese modernism, the Independence Palace was only completed in 1966.
(Edited from text excerpts provided by Gallery Medium)