120 x 80 cm
A Soldiers’ Garden by Nhà Sàn Collective is a night portrait series located in an army camp outside Hanoi. Here new recruits assemble for basic training during the first months of their military service, before they are relocated to their assigned battalion. Night is the only time the soldiers in training have a few moments for themselves. While some viewers may be drawn to the fresh faces of young soldiers, the images also hint at distances— between the subjects and viewers, intimacy and fear, darkness and light. In this context, the garden becomes a space of transition and in betweenness. Here, the young recruits, mostly under 20-years-old, are “transitioned” into adulthood. They are no longer civilians, but not yet fully-fledged soldiers, and must negotiate this peculiar space of masculinities and male sexualities. Many of them were previously living with parents in the countryside. These portraits commemorate a particular moment in the young recruits’ lives, in which they are initiated into a new space-time of total order: physical, political, economic, and social.
Nhà Sàn Collective (NSC) began operating as an independent artist collective in Hanoi in 2013, when a group of friends set up a publicly accessible space. With or without a physical base, NSC has worked with fellow companions and collaborators to organize exhibitions, workshops, film screenings, talks, and other activities as a support platform for artists in the community. The initiative wants to encourage exchange, expansion, and connection. It is a place that is open toward works in progress and the unexpected; a just-do-it attitude that does not always yield answers. The collective board consists of Truong Que Chi, Nguyen Phuong Linh, Nguyen Quoc Thanh, Vu Duc Toan, and Tuan Mami. The name Nhà Sàn signifies the collective’s foundation which is rooted in the spirit of Nhà Sàn Studio, an artist-run space founded in 1998 in Hanoi. The original Nhà Sàn, a house on stilts, was taken apart in 2020. In the Ngoc Thuy area by the bank of the Red River, the artists imagine this house to become the new Nhà Sàn Collective space, rebuilt, and transformed.
Got Your Back by Gisela McDaniel depicts two women of color from different ethnic backgrounds who share similar violent experiences...
Charles Lee at SF Camerawork: Black Cowboys and Their Horses | KQED Skip to Nav Skip to Main Skip to Footer The Do List SF Camerawork Show Honors the Relationship Between Black Cowboys and Their Horses Nia Coats Dec 13 Save Article Save Article Failed to save article Please try again Facebook Share-FB Twitter Share-Twitter Email Share-Email Copy Link Copy Link An installation view of Charles Lee's show 'sweat + dirt' at SF Camerawork...
10 Art Books to Add to Your Shelf This December Skip to content Kareem Khubchandani's Decolonize Drag , Sonya Clark's newest catalogue, and more books we're reading this December (photo Lakshmi Rivera Amin/ Hyperallergic ) If you’re shamefully counting the titles you didn’t get around to reading this year, know that you are not alone...
In Fordlândia Fieldwork (2012), Tossin documents the remains of Henry Ford’s rubber enterprise Fordlândia, built in 1928 in the Brazilian Amazon to export cultivated rubber for the booming automobile industry...
Pandemic in the Philippines: A cultural sector on its own | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles August 17, 2020 By Katrina Stuart Santiago (2,200 words, 8-minute read) When I was first asked to write about “cultural leadership” in the Philippines, I turned up a blank...
Our Grandmothers’ Gardens by Olga Grotova is based on the history of Soviet allotment gardens, which were small plots of land distributed amongst the families of factory workers to compensate for poor food supply in a country that was over-producing weapons...
Maya Watanabe’s video installation Bullet unfolds within the context of the Peruvian justice and forensic systems...
Zhang Wenzhi – ARTOMITY 藝源 Tiger in Mountains, Deer at Ocean / Blindspot Gallery / Hong Kong / Nov 28, 2023 – Jan 13, 2024 / Tiger in Mountains, Deer at Ocean , curated by Leo Li Chen at Blindspot Gallery, focuses on Zhang Wenzhi’s latest series of works, primarily consisting of large-format ink-on-paper pieces, accompanied by a video...
Experiencing a slice of life: Artist’s Block by ArtWave | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints Zinkie Aw March 1, 2022 By Noorul Raaha As’art (830 words, 3-minute read) Waterloo Street is a smorgasbord of sensory experiences, from Hindu and Buddhist temples coexisting side by side, to old uncles and aunties hawking religious paraphernalia, shaded by their New Moon abalone umbrellas, and stalls offering acupuncture services, amongst other things...