87 cm x 6.5 cm [diameter]; base 12 cm x 12 cm x 2.5cm
This work presents the image of an immolated monk engraved on a baseball bat. The flames surround him eroding the extremity of the bat. The delicate sculpture refers to the sacrifice of the Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, who immolated himself on June 16th 1963, in reaction to the discrimination and the repressive politics of the Diem Catholic regime (regime installed by the Americans) towards the Buddhists. Ironically a memorial was built where the sacrifice took place in Hô Chi Minh-City, despite the fact that under Communism, religion was incompatible with the desire to transform social class. The artwork recalls the shape of the monument; a monument to a monument. By acknowledging this historical action on a famous national site, one can witness the Vietnamese communist government sympathizing somehow with the victims of the American ‘puppet’ Diem, despite its security policy which guaranteed most of the time an equally repressive behavior. The representation of this act on a sports accessory, which is supposed to symbolize America and its different social classes, is a way to recall that this popular game reveals social and political behavior. Baseball is considered like a national sport in the United States and Louisville Slugger is one of the most famous brands in the history of baseball. In some ways, it could be considered as a sacrilege to carve such a symbolic national item, that represents power but also violence. The social symbol carried by baseball and the hypocritical act of building a memorial monument in tribute to this monk, both come from different contexts but are, however, used in favor of political contingency. Religion and sport are social occasions for community gatherings, but may also provoke conflict and violence.
Tuan Andrew Nguyen is an artist and filmmaker, one of the three founders of The Propeller Group created in 2006. He always establishes his work within cultural, political and historical contexts and usually refers to the formal strategies of conceptual art. He studied at CalArts in Los Angeles but currently lives in Ho Chi Minh City.
Vallance’s Rocket is a vibrant picture in which masses of color and collage coalesce into a central vehicle, yet the whole surface seems lit with the roar of space travel...
The threshold in contemporary Pakistan between the security of private life and the increasingly violent and unpredictable public sphere is represented in Abidi’s 2009 series Karachi ...
Mario Garcia Torres imagines cinematic devices to replay stories occasionally forgotten by Conceptual art...
To make Mickey Mouse (2010), Paul McCarthy altered a found photograph—not of the iconic cartoon, but of a man costumed as Mickey...
The Class (2005) by Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook challenges the viewer’s personal sense of morality and tolerance by depicting a classroom from hell...
Physical and mental exploration have been founding elements in Joachim Koester’s research for several years...
Haendel’s series Knights (2011) is a set of impeccably drafted, nine-foot-tall pencil drawings depicting full suits of armor...
The photograph Exquisite Eco Living is part of a larger series titled Executive Properties in which he digitally manipulated the images to insert iconic buildings of Kuala Lumpur in the view of derelict spaces also found in the city...
The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment...
White Minority , is typical of Capistran’s sampling of high art genres and living subcultures in which the artist subsumes an object’s high art pedigree within a vernacular art form...
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...
Canned Laughter was Okón’s response to an invitation from Ciudad Juárez , Mexico, where artists were asked to create works based on their experience of the city...
The Damaged series by Lisa Oppenheim takes a series of selected photographs from the Chicago Daily News (1902 – 1933) as its source material...
Hill of Poisonous Trees (three men) (2008) exemplifies the artist’s signature photo-weaving technique, in which he collects diverse found photographs—portraits of anonymous people, stills from blockbuster films, or journalistic images—cuts them into strips, and weaves them into new composition...
The artist describes the work as “very performative video-pieces but they take on a more sculptural feel...
The Cloud of Unknowing (2011) is titled after a 14th-century medieval treatise on faith, in which “the cloud of unknowing” that stands between the aspirant and God can only be evoked by the senses, rather than the rational mind...