photo: © Nhu Xuan Hua - I'm home late, don't you care where I've been? Extract from Honey Baby, 2020
Three exhibitions by artists from the Vietnamese diaspora will open in September in the left building of Huis Marseille. This is a collection presentation of the series Archive of Dr. Joseph M. Carrier 1962–1973 by the Danish-Vietnamese Danh Vo (1975), a large hall with a collection supplemented with loans from the American-Vietnamese Diane Severin Nguyen (1990) and the first solo museum exhibition by the French-Vietnamese Nhu Xuan Hua (1989).
Themes from the diaspora return in the work of each of these artists, but always in a very individual way.
Nhu Xuan Hua - Hug of a swan
The first museum exhibition of the French-Vietnamese artist Nhu Xuan Hua (1989, Paris), a remarkable new talent. Hua made a name for herself as a photographer for magazines such as Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, Dazed Beauty, DANSK and TIME Magazine and worked for major fashion brands such as Kenzo, Maison Margiela, Dior and Levi's.
Yet fashion photography is just one of the areas in which she excels. The exhibition Hug of a swan ('Embrace of a Swan') highlights the versatility of her artistry, which also takes shape in installations and autonomous work inspired by family photos.
The exhibition shows that these categories are in fact inseparable and that the inspiration for each of Hua's creations comes from a personal and shared memory.
In the aftermath of the Vietnam War (1955-1975), Nhu Xuan Hua's family fled to Belgium and France, after which Hua was born in suburban Paris. As a second-generation immigrant, she grew up between two cultures. After she left her parental home, she felt increasingly distanced from her roots. She asked her family members about their past in hopes of bridging this gap and learning more about herself in the process. The exhibition at Huis Marseille is in fact Hua's artistic response to this research, presented as atmospheric installations of altars with associative artefacts.
Danh Vo - Collection
The photos in the series Archive of Dr. Joseph M. Carrier 1962–1973 by the leading artist Danh Vo (1975, Bà Ria) were not made by the artist himself. It is Vo's selection from the photo archive of the American anthropologist Joseph Michel Carrier, who was stationed in Vietnam as an anti-riot specialist from 1962 to 1973.
In 2010, Vo published this series as an edition as a photogravure, in collaboration with master printer Niels Borch Jensen, who revived this 19th-century intaglio printing technique. The soft black tones inherent to this technique contribute to the intimate atmosphere of the interactions between the young men that Carrier had captured.
When Vo gave a lecture for an artist-in-residency in Los Angeles in 2006, Carrier was in the audience. Afterwards he went to Vo. 'I came face to face with someone who had worked in Vietnam throughout the war and was homosexual. I had never thought about that combination,” Vo remembers. His interest was piqued and the two became friends.
During a joint trip to Vietnam, Carrier said that in 1962 in Vietnam he was confronted for the first time with boys and men publicly holding hands - something he considered impossible in the conservative American community in which he had grown up. He experienced it as a liberation and decided to capture those moments. The interactions Carrier saw were intimate, but not necessarily homoerotic in the Vietnamese context. Vo: 'It is a different form of male intimacy: it is characteristic of a hypermasculine society that the thought of homosexuality does not even arise.'
Back home after their trip, Carrier showed his photos to a moved Vo. In 1979, as a four-year-old, Vo fled South Vietnam with his family in a homemade boat. They were rescued by a Danish freighter and Vo would spend the rest of his childhood in Denmark. Carrier's photographs therefore document a past and a culture that he recognized as his own, but was never able to experience personally. “And they were beautiful photos too.”
In 2007, Carrier gave his negatives to Vo with permission to show the photos in an exhibition. Around that time, Vo contacted master printer Niels Borch Jensen, who had revived photogravure since the '90s, a 19th-century intaglio printing technique. Inspired by the way you can manipulate the appearance of a print by using different ink mixtures, Carrier's photographs were released as photogravures. These prints have recognizable velvety black tones with a slightly grainy structure. It gives Carrier's portraits an appropriate softness.
Vo himself is known for his conceptual installations, sculptures and performances – not necessarily for photography. Yet this work fits well in his oeuvre in which, inspired by his own experiences as an immigrant, issues of integration and identity predominate.
Diane Severin Nguyen - Collection
Each photographic image of Diane Severin Nguyen (1990, Carson) evokes a strange sensation in the viewer. Using remarkable, flesh-like materials, sensual light and vibrant colors, she creates complex, difficult to interpret images. The detailed photos have something uncanny, as if something unexpected could happen at any moment.
In her photographic work, Nguyen uses both organic and synthetic materials, such as latex, hair and liquids, which cannot be recognized as such. The materials are often deliberately captured in a state of transformation: the moment when a physical tension arises. In the work Daily affirmations (2021) it almost seems as if part of the (animal) skin is being pulled by a chain, which pierces the skin.
Nguyen manipulates the lighting by using artificial light, such as LED lights or the built-in flashlight of a iPhone. The photos are framed in handmade steel frames, in which a rainbow effect is visible. The special frames give an extra dimension to the manipulated lighting.
Nguyen speaks about the 'wounds' and 'breaks' that she wants to capture in her work. The materials in staged compositions are often very vulnerable. She captures the exact moment when the structure breaks, cracks or collapses. By making unusual combinations of organic and synthetic materials, Nguyen wants to strip the materials of their usual function. She views the medium of photography as a 'liquid language' and breaks with existing hierarchies and meanings.
Artists from the Vietnamese diaspora in Huis Marseille - Nhu Xuan Hua, Danh Vo & Diane Severin Nguyen
September 10 to December 4, 2022
Read more about these artists at Huis Marseille
