In art critic Nicolas Bourriaud’s essay, Altermodern (2009) for the Tate Triennial exhibition, he claims that “displacement has become a method of depiction”. In this essay, I will explore the work of two contemporary Vietnamese artists: Trần Trọng Vũ and Trương Tân, and their engagement with the themes of border-crossing, migration and exile in the context of present-day Vietnam. The two artists are among many who advocate for artistic self-expression under Vietnamese censorship rules and use displacement within the art world for their benefit.
The world changes. Communication, travel, and migration accelerated in the 21st century. And certainly, it changes the way we live. For Nicolas Bourriaud, this created a more chaotic, more dislocated society. He suggested in Altermodern that “our civilization, which bears the imprints of a multicultural explosion and the proliferation of cultural strata, resembles a structureless constellation, awaiting a transformation into an archipelago.” (Bourriaud, no pages available) The effect of postmodernism makes the world as ideologies and opinions become more fractured than ever. We live amidst an endless desert of fragmented information. When globalisation helped to bring the world closer together, we suddenly realised that as a species, we are so far apart and more divided than ever, either religiously, politically, or culturally.
And certainly, this too changes the way artists perceive and reflect the world around them. As the world becomes more connected, artists suddenly have to deal with a more expanded group of audiences. They need to find ways of retaining their unique artistic perspective while interacting with a world that is much larger than their own. How can one possibly read and reflect on the world, while as a species, they are too detached from it? How can one reflect on history when there are too many versions of history? Hence as artists, history is no longer the source of inspiration to be reflected on like modernists, nor to be dialectically questioned like the postmodernists. In the world of altermodernity, history must become the medium itself of the artwork. “The line is more important than the points along its length”, Bourriaud remarked.
Now let’s move on to Vietnam. The case of contemporary art in Vietnam is interesting. But we must first examine the history of Vietnam before we delve into our case studies. After the country was freed from the tyranny of French colonisation (the 1800s - 1954) and the “American War” (1955 - 1975), Vietnam was left in an interesting historical position. When the Americans left the country, the North and the South were reunited again, under the leadership of the Communist Party. And that should have been the end of it. The Cold War was still very much going on, and Western media was still very much preaching on the ravage of socialism, the corruption of communism, that the dictatorship of the leftist must end.
But today, when we walk on the streets alongside the Hoàn Kiếm Lake, and see all the backpack Westerners (Tây ba lô) sipping their Phở Bò among the colourful neon streets, or riding our motorcycles around Hồ Chí Minh City and see all the dashing skyscrapers, we must ask: what exactly happened to Vietnam? The world certainly did not see that coming. Asked about Vietnam 40 years ago, most people would regard the country as a group of rice farmers who happened to beat the Americans by some miracle. Nobody could have foreseen that Vietnam would become one of the biggest rising economic powerhouses in the world, with brands like VinFast, Vinamilk, and Trung Nguyên coffee even appearing in the Western market. Where are the labour camps? Where are the authoritarian oppressors?
The Đổi Mới (Renovation) economic reform in 1986 was the reason behind this rapid development of Vietnam. Before 1986, Vietnam closed its doors to global trade and practised a command economy (bao cấp). However, seeing the inflation rate soar up to the appalling 700%, as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union leading to the dissolution of the Comecon alliance, Vietnam was forced to come up with new, radical changes to its economic policies. Vietnam had no choice but to open its border and engage in globalisation.
And now we return to the story of art. As a result of the Đổi Mới reform, the Vietnamese government is more accepting of different forms of contemporary art that celebrate individual expressions and opinions, unlike the socialist realism art of the past that only demonstrates scenes of farmers, workers, and intellectuals with pretty smiles under the dazzling light of socialism.
Example of a Vietnamese propaganda poster
But does this mean that artists, writers and activists now have more rights to explore socio-political issues of the countries? As I mentioned above, the case of contemporary art in Vietnam is interesting. The answer to that question is yes, and no. According to decree 23/2019/NĐ-CP on organising exhibitions from the Ministry of Culture, Sports & Tourism, “exhibitions can only be organised with an official permit (for exhibitions, a permit must be applied for) from official government bodies” (Article 7, no. 1). In short, there is still a lot of censorship in Vietnam. But how does the contemporary art scene, which values self-expression and personal opinions on socio-political issues, thrive under Communist censorship?
The answer to that question is interesting. For artists in Vietnam, this is both a blessing and a curse: it is the public’s general apathy towards the art scene, along with the lack of knowledge of art history. This has created the best form of protection for artists from censorship, compared to the likes of poets, writers or musicians, who had to deal with more absolute territories. Written words are more straightforward. Naturally, this leads to more censorship. But for art, it is different. In Samanta Libby’s article The Art Of Censorship in Vietnam (2011), she interviewed an artist who chose to be anonymous for “safety reasons” regarding this topic: “Censorship in Vietnam has complicated boundaries. The most important thing for Vietnamese visual artists is to know where to push against boundaries and where [to] hold back. So sneaking is an important skill for the provocative artist in Vietnam. Many of us create artwork with multiple layers of meaning so we can explain it reasonably and differently to different audiences. It is a dangerous but also exciting game.” (Libby, p.213). Art deals with visual stimuli to evoke ideas. That means that it can be interpreted in many different ways. For the majority of Vietnamese people, art is not seen as a tool for political activism and valid criticism of society and art is usually mistaken for artisanry. Most people see art this way, and ironically, this also includes the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism itself. To properly censor art, one must have an understanding of art history. Thanks to the general indifference of Vietnamese society towards the art scene, contemporary Vietnamese artists have learned how to be provocative under broad daylight. Artists rely on abstraction or figuration, or just simply incorporating written texts into English, because nobody would bother to translate them anyway. “As the result, the artists have possibly the freest voices in Vietnam” (Libby, p.209) Now, let’s take a look at the work of Vietnamese contemporary artist Trần Trọng Vũ, reflecting his Vietnamese diaspora experience when he immigrated to France in the ‘80s, in his disquietingly Kafkaesque portrayal of bureaucratic propaganda:
Trần Trọng Vũ | The Luggage Without Destinations | Installation | 2011
As Bourriaud suggested, contemporary Vietnamese artists fit into the trope of the “cultural nomad”. Trần Trọng Vũ would be a popular example. Vũ was one of the first artists who left the country before the economic reform and pursued his studies in France. In his work, part of the exhibition Toi & Moi in Paris, Vũ reflected on the world he grew up in, around Communist propaganda posters: the vibrant primary colours, the bold brushwork of the radiant smiles on the faces of radiant farmers, workers, and intellectuals. Like the posters, Vũ’s paintings and installations are flat, to the point, but empty. Similar to the examples given by Bourriaud: “Darren Almond teleports bus shelters of Auschwitz into a gallery” or “Franz Ackermann invents the age of painting with GPS”, Trần Trọng Vũ also tries something similar in his work. He displaced the concept of Communism in the settings of Western art scenes. Vietnam’s policy to open its border has allowed artists to have more global voices, and to seek political activism in the West while still reflecting social issues in Vietnam.
The image above is Vũ’s installation: The Luggage Without Destinations as part of the exhibition Toi & Moi. Let’s now discuss the work. In this work, he reflects on his experiences of leaving Vietnam in the early 80s. The luggage, painted in the vibrant cadmium red and yellow of the Vietnamese flag represents the artist’s homage to his origins, even when he is assuming the role of a cultural nomad. Throughout the Toi & Moi exhibitions, a sense of Orwellian paranoia is provoked when Vũ blurs the border between personal memories and nationalistic doctrine for the masses: a chaotic infusion of the private and the public. He remarked in an interview with Art Asia Pacific that his work is a dedication “to memories, there were a lot of Asian faces, as they were depicted by communist propaganda. Those frozen smiles have always been very inspiring for me. I also wanted to use the colours of propaganda posters, which were always primary colours—yellows, reds, and blues”. The symbolism behind the luggage in his installation is similar to the concepts discussed in Altermodern: the luggage represents Vũ’s physical “displacement”. In Vũ’s work, we can see that “displacement has become a method of depiction”: under the censorship of the Vietnamese governments, either his work will not be allowed to be exhibited, or he would have to play around with the wording in his exhibition proposal in order to get a permit from the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Tourism - that is why he sought political asylum in France and chose to exhibit his work in Paris.
Let’s look at another example of a Vietnamese artist facing issues with censorship and relying on displacement as a method of depiction.
Trương Tân | Untitled Performance Art | 1994
(photo taken from the exhibition catalogue)
“I’m not afraid of the police anymore, now that I feel I have become an international artist,” provokingly exclaimed artist Trương Tân, reflecting on his experiences of being one of the first radical contemporary artists in Vietnam. (Guggenheim Museum). Trương Tân is not a stranger to controversies. Being the first publicly homosexual artist in Vietnam back in the '90s, his radical approach to the themes of sexuality and profanities did not fall in line with the Communist government at the time. Until the 2000s, homosexuality was officially listed as a mental illness, and even in the present day, there are still some far-right groups that frown upon the LGBT community in Vietnam. In modern times, the recognition of LGBT rights in Vietnam is a work in progress. From the 2010s onwards, Vietnam has taken more progressive approaches to replace historically patriarchal Confucian ideas, allowing the first annual Viet Pride parade since 2012, or allowing the rights for sex reassignment surgery in 2015 (Civil Code 91/2015/QH13, Article 37). Nevertheless, contemporary artists like Trương Tân have long been pioneers in seeking more representations and recognition of homosexuality. Obviously displeased at Vietnam’s policy on homosexuality at the time, Trương Tân did a spontaneous untitled performance at the Hanoi University Of Fine Art (image above): he displayed his activism by wrapping himself in a white sheet of fabric and tied himself with a rope. The performance revolves around the idea of him trying to break out of the fabric (which he did), representing the advocacy for sexual freedom and unconstrained artistic expression.
Apart from his stance on the LGBT community in Vietnam, Trương Tân was also famous for his anti-commercial opinions regarding the contemporary art scene. When the Đổi Mới reform policies were first introduced, Vietnam rapidly developed in every aspect: economically, culturally, and politically. This fast advancement of the economy undoubtedly affected the art scene in Vietnam, when Western investors started to look into the work of young and progressive Vietnamese artists and see their market potential. Trương Tân opposed this. For him, art should be about self-expression and liberation, not confined to the art market and be purchased by capitalists who only see the profits in artistic investment without ever acknowledging the messages remarked by the artists. In his murals, we can also link to Bourriaud's ideas of displacement as the method for depiction.
Mural at Gold Cock Bar | Work In Progress
Like Keith Haring or Jean-Michel Basquiat, Trương Tân was famous for making large-scale murals and then erasing them after. In the case of Mural at Gold Cock Bar, Tân collaborated with his friends: artists Mai Chi Thanh and Eric Lereoux to do a spontaneous 2-hour performance painting on the wall of their favourite gay bar. This is another example of how contemporary artists in Vietnam play around with the censorship rules of the government. If this is to be organised as an art exhibition, the three artists would need an official permit from the government. Part of the reason why they got away is because the work is spontaneous, and the other part is that the government does not recognise performance as a valid art form. (23/2019/NĐ-CP, Article 3, no.1: “An exhibition is the organization of a concentrated display of works, artefacts, and documents for a period of time, in a certain space in different forms, with different technical means for the purpose of introducing, announcing and disseminating in society and community.”) Nothing was mentioned about performance. If it is not art, then why exhibit it? If it is not exhibited, then why need an official permit? The mural was displayed for two months until the paint started to wear off due to the humid weather conditions. The mural is still deteriorating today.
So, linking Trương Tân’s work to what Bourriaud remarked in Altermodern: “no longer can a work be reduced to the presence of an object in the here and now, rather it consists of a significant network whose interrelationships the artist elaborates”, what Bourriaud means is that for the majority of art history, art is that the experience of seeing the work is still the exhibition of something, to someone. But what if we reverse the dynamic? What happens if art becomes the exhibition of someone, to something? The relationship between the art and the artist is no longer that of the detached connection between a human being and an object. It is the “progression in time and space he or she controls: a circuit, in fact.” The value of art does not lie in the objects that the artists made. That is what separates a work of art from a mere commodity. When we reverse the dynamics of seeing art and interpret it as the exposure of someone to something, we shift the attention away from the artwork and towards the viewer. Then the value of the work ceased to be commercial, but emotional, so it does not matter whether the work’s form has been altered or even destroyed.
So what is the moral of the story? “What is the message they convey today?” asked Bourriaud. “What is the narrative that drives them?” continued Bourriaud. “We have an ethical duty not to let signs and images vanish into the abyss of indifference or commercial oblivion, to find words to animate them as something other than products destined for financial speculation or mere amusement,” answered Bourriaud. That quote ends the essay nicely, so I will also stop writing here. Like Bourriaud, I await a transformation of society into an archipelago. I await altermodernity.
Works Cited
Bourriaud, Nicolas. “Altermodern.” Tate Triennial, 2009.
Congressional Equality Caucus. “Vietnam's First Generation of LBGT Pride | LGBTQ.” Vietnam's first generation of LGBT Pride, 17 July 2014, https://lgbtq.house.gov/https%3A/lgbtequalitycaucus.hdvdevedit1.house.gov/media-center/international-news/vietnams-first.
Libby, Samantha. “The Art Of Censorship in Vietnam.” Journal Of International Affairs, 1 ed., no. 65, 2011, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24388192.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3A3a9ccca747f9c6608d6f09042395be1a&ab_segments=&origin=&initiator=&acceptTC=1. Accessed 21 November 2023.
Ministry Of Culture, Sports & Tourism Vietnam. Decree 23/2019/NĐ-CP: Organising Exhibitions. 26 February 2019.
Morelli, Naima. “The Art of Memory: Interview with Trần Trọng Vũ.” ArtAsiaPacific, 15 February 2023, https://artasiapacific.com/people/the-art-of-memory-interview-with-tr-n-tr-ng-v.
Nualart, Cristina. “The pioneering queer artists who opened Vietnam to gay culture.” The Conversation, 7 June 2017, https://theconversation.com/the-pioneering-queer-artists-who-opened-vietnam-to-gay-culture-78719. Accessed 26 November 2023.
Vietnam’s National Assembly. Civil Code 91/2015/QH13. 24 November 2015.
Zaman, Nisma. “Truong Tan | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation.” Guggenheim Museum, unavailable, https://www.guggenheim.org/map/truong-tan. Accessed 26 November 2023.
Additional Reading
“Đổi Mới.” Wikipedia page.
Nhu Huong, Bui. Trung, Pham. “Vietnamese Contemporary Art 1990 - 2010”, Knowledge Publishing House, 2012
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