Discussion within the exhibition No more, not yet
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02 April 2023
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A curatorial tour with Thái Hà
Adventure and its tropes have long been used to represent foreign lands and their so-called strangeness from the perspective of the traveller. Join exhibition curator Thái Hà for a walkthrough of The year is XXXX at EMASI Van Phuc, where adventure is told from the gaze of the flora and fauna that populate the twisted utopias created by artist Quynh Dong. The tour explores how the exhibition is built as chapters of a fictional story, following a young girl who drifts across layered realities.
Crafted as an unfinished exhibition, with guest curators and artists invited to propose alternative endings to the young girl’s journey, the tour also visits a rotating display currently curated by Bill Nguyen, featuring the video artwork Tyrant Star by Diane Severin Nguyen, where our heroine slips into a fractured present, somewhere near the end of the adventure, or perhaps at another beginning. The display will change every six weeks, with artworks selected by guest curators that will be announced in due course. Join us to explore the aesthetics of adventure as written by colonial era travellers, Vietnamese pro-independence intellectuals, and now in a reimagining that returns agency to the land.
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The year is XXXX re–examines the travel writings of missionaries and explorers to Indochina and unearths the fictional complexities of their texts. In a new imagining of adventure, the works on display return the gaze to the lands travelled through. The artists’ absorbing installations centre the natural inhabitants of these geographies: the creatures and spirits that play, prey, haunt, and wither as the land is extracted and exploited. The exhibition takes place simultaneously across the campuses of EMASI Nam Long (District 7) and EMASI Van Phuc (Thu Duc City) from April to November 2025.
This event is part of a series of public and education programs in association with The year is XXXX, an exhibition organized by Nguyễn Art Foundation.