iii.x_Unrealized Utopia - Solo exhibition at Gallery Medium
I am very excited to share my first solo exhibition, organized by Gallery Medium in Saigon!
The exhibition's title, “iii. x_Unrealized Utopia,” takes the form of a data file and brings together artworks that can be interpreted as transmissions from unrealized futures. Trần’s artworks are based on research in international archives of the Bauhaus and the nation-building project in Vietnam since the 1960s. The exhibition includes artworks with diverse materials, such as paintings, sculptures, videos, and digital collages experimented on various printing materials.
“iii.x_Unrealised Utopia” is a collection of artworks that elides the linear march of history and modernist conceits. They lean into a technological acceleration wherein artificial intelligence is a collaborative medium of transmission from the past to the future and the future to the past so as to geopoetically recover the lost political histories and possibilities of our present.
Exhibition brochure, with an essay by Kathleen Ditzig, designed by Naveen Hattis, can be read here.
Prospect.6 the future is present, the harbinger is home
Co-curated by Miranda Lash and Ebony G. Patterson, continuing its legacy as the longest-running, citywide contemporary art triennial, Prospect.6 will feature the work of 51 artists spanning approximately 20 venues and unconventional spaces. The vast majority of the works on view will be newly commissioned, with an emphasis on large-scale and ambitious installations in institutional, unconventional, and public spaces.
Historically, New Orleans has been regarded as a city deeply rooted in its past. For Prospect.6, Co-Artistic Directors Miranda Lash and Ebony G. Patterson will posit New Orleans as a globally relevant point of departure for examining our collective future as it relates to climate change, legacies of colonialism, and definitions of belonging and home.
I will present The Curator Ghost at one of the P6 venue - the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University.
Curated by Rirkrit Tiravanija as Artistic Director, with Jiwon Yu and Hyo Gyoung Jeon, 2024 Art Spectrum Dream Screen departs from the idea that artists in the Millennial and Post-Millennial generations have come to perceive the physical world differently in an era where experiences mediated through screens—the internet, games, films—have increasingly become commonplace. The title “Dream Screen” is a neologism that combines the dream, a fictional realm that is nevertheless a poignant indicator of the subconscious and the screen through which (in)direct experiences take place. It also refers to a device that facilitates fantastical remnants behind the screen. Taking this term for its title, the exhibition presents how the new generation of artists navigate the conditions of life and weave together their own stories based on screen-mediated experiences and fragmentary afterimages when the grand narrative and the myth of linear progress no longer provide a reliable prospect for the future.
I present Elysium without Shores, The Galaxy of Electrified Heat, The Spinning Shadows and Waiting For The Late Moon Drops.
Cloud Chamer is the first institutional solo exhibition of my collective Art Labor, taking place at Para Site in Hong Kong. We decide to showcase the collective practice in collaboration with our long-term Jrai community and some artist friends, together with our individual artworks.
The exhibition ‘Cloud Chamber’ presents Art Labor’s long-term historical research, poetic observations, and decade-long practice of relationship-building with the Jrai community in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Alongside Art Labor’s newly commissioned and existing works, the exhibition features artwork from Jrai artists, with whom the collective has created collaborative projects since 2016, archival material from a missionary-turned-anthropologist in the French colonial period, and works by contemporary artists inspired by the region.
By reframing the region beyond its turbulent past, ‘Cloud Chamber’ looks to engage the audience in an imaginative reflection on the region’s complex history and its ongoing impact, from war, industrialisation, to the lingering effects of missionary activity. The exhibition title ‘Cloud Chamber’ alludes to the duality of matter and antimatter reacting to one another, a concept echoed by reincarnation beliefs in indigenous cosmologies of the Central Highlands. Expanding on this duality like a gravitational field, the exhibition explores the interplay of opposing forces—regeneration and destruction, modernity and tradition, reality and dream—that continues to shape the complex dynamics and ever-changing landscape of the Central Highlands today.
Revolutionary Romances? Global Art Histories in the GDR at SKD
Continuing the dialogue between Northern Vietnam and the GDR, I participate in several programs with the museum Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD).
First, I curate a virtual film screening on voices - the SKD's interactive platform. I also have an interview with Kathleen Reinhardt about my thoughts and personal stories when I make the curated list of moving images. It can be read here.
Then, PLATTENLOTUS is selected to exhibit at the main exhibition at SKD. The exhibition focuses on the ›revolutionary romances‹ – the friendly revolutionary relations – that were carried on by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) with countries of the Global South. It thus takes a closer look at the little-studied subject of East German art in the context of global, transcultural art histories.
Shown alongside works from the collections of the SKD are contemporary international positions and commissioned works by Georges Adéagbo, Sven Johne, Hamlet Lavastida, Dana Lorenz, Sonya Schönberger, Wenke Seemann, Sung Tieu and Arlette Quỳnh-Anh Trần, which consider and critically analyse from a present-day perspective the former ideals of ›solidarity‹ and ›international friendship‹. More info of the show here.
Posthuman: Story Telling for Earthly Survival at ACC Gwangju
Together with architecture studio vn-a, I participate in this group exhibition at Asia Culture Center in Gwangju, as the final showcase of the 4-month residency. I present PLATTENLOTUS video installation, embraced by an architectural intervention designed by vn-a.
Art in Networks: The GDR and its Global Relations Fellowship
As part of the network of artists, historians and scholars whose work deal with the legacy of the German Democratic Republic, I had a chance to introduce PLATTENLOTUS on the program's comprehensive archival chronology, along with an essay for my work by art historian and curator Fang-Tze Hsu. Check it out here.