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Viêt Given name Kièu Hanh Ngô Canberra Contemporary Art Space 10 June - 19th July Canberra |
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 Hanh Ngô, Chinese Export |
The three walls
of Hanh Ngô's exhibition bears different titles-'Mekong
Delta Blues', 'Perfume River Blues' and 'Chinese Export
Blues'. These 'blues' refer to the colour of China
shards, gathered by the artist during a trip to the
Forbidden Purple city of Hué. On each wall, fragments
are arranged within outlines of North and South Vietnam.
These fragments are either woven tapestries or pieces of
glass with words etched into their surface. The
tapestries are designed like fragments of pottery. The
glass fragments are engraved with quotations from two
unidentified and intertwined sources - either the
artist's travel diary and a novel by Margarite Duras. According to Hanh Ngô, the work conveys something of the Viêt Kièu experience (the life of Vietnamese in diaspora). Hanh Ngô writes on the "double displacement" of returned Vietnamese. In her words, the "insider/outsider position of Viêt Kièu means they are understood at the same time as they are completely misunderstood". This diaspora narrative helps contextualise her act of gathering of fragments from lost traditions. The exhibition however, is set up a a series of barriers between the visitor and any quick summation of what the work is about. The disparate aesthetic arrangement of the pieces makes it difficult to comprehend the work as whole and the gallery is broken up into a series of fragments that cannot be immediately drawn together on entering the space. This dispersion certainly echoes the Viêt Kièu theme, although its also the source of a lack coherence for the viewer. The second barrier is the artist's use of the third person in describing the Viêt Kièu experience. While happy to write in the first person about her own travels, she puts her conclusions at a distance since there is no we that readily speaks through her works. When describing the Viêt Kièu as they, the artist uses her academic voice and there is is a tension between this professional position and the more confessional voice evident speaking in the glass fragments. The last difficulty lies in the visitor's hesitation at entering the more private experience of the artist. As canny post-colonialists, we are wary of romancing Hanh Ngô's Viêt Kièu biography. We see the danger that our response to the exhibition is confined to our imaginary repertoires of marginalisation, rather than anything personal. A natural response to these barriers is to get closer than usual to the work and here, a kind of intimate distance or implied phenomenology emerges around the contrasting use of materials - a difficulty of translation between ceramics and tapestry. Along these lines, the conversion of painting into tapestry borrows from the rectilinear form of the loom and stretcher, as well as major compositional elements. However, weaving a fragment of ceramic lacks shared formal structure, and so becomes more an act of homage than aesthetic borrowing. At close quarters, these fragments instruct us in the patience needed when weaving. Even up close, the glass fragments are physically difficult to read. Depending on the angle of vision, viewers can focus on either the surface engraving or the shadow its casts on the tain backing. This problem provides some internal analogue to the difficulty of understanding the show as a single unit. In one fragment, Ngô or Duras writes: "She looks at herself she has come up close to her reflection. She comes even closer. Doesn't quite recognise herself. She doesn't understand what has happened. Years later she will understand." Underlying the bifocal nature of this reading is an uncertainty about its authorisation. It is difficult to determine whether we are experiencing the genuine account of a flawed homecoming or our own private cinema of exotic romance. Rather than attempting to resolve this duality, it seems better to contain it. This ambiguity serves as a grain of salt, which counters the languorous romance of Margarite Duras into which visitors might so easily disappear. This seems the key to overcoming the hesitation of postcolonialism. To read the fragments with uncertainty helps visitors reflect on how much their own enjoyment of this misrecognition is encoded within the French genre of romantic tragedy. Even with such wariness, it is difficult to leave without the impression of a significant artist in the making. After a number of distinguished works in group shows, Hanh Ngô's first solo show testifies to her strength as an artist. She is willing to push an idea to its material limits. Kevin Murray © The artists and |
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 Hanh Ngô, Chinese Export |
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Hanh Ngô, Chinese
Export |
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