The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10) Catalogue

Artists The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 108 Our Time (detail) 2021 Triptych: Double-sided ink and watercolour on silk / Three panels: 120 x 80cm (each) / Courtesy: The artist Inside of Us 4 (detail) 2020 Diptych: Double-sided ink and watercolour on silk / Two panels: 120 x 80cm (each) Inside of Us 4 (detail) 2020 Diptych: Double-sided ink and watercolour on silk / Two panels: 120 x 80cm (each) Courtesy: The artist Nguyễn Thị Châu Giang's elegant, seemingly romantic depictions of women in ink and watercolour on silk are visually arresting and quietly confronting. Nguyễn began silk painting in 2008, and has since developed a great proficiency, to which she adds reflections from her life experience to depict the realities of Vietnamese women today. Nguyễn reflects on women’s changing roles across the twentieth century, a period that also witnessed the history of silk painting. While it is likely that silk painting was part of the interface between China and Vietnam that includes lacquer painting and calligraphy, few pre-colonial silk paintings have survived. The Indochina Fine Arts and Applied Arts College in Hanoi encouraged a revival through its teaching during the 1930s and 1940s, which favoured traditional imagery, including figures of women dressed in ao dai . Later, the turn to socialist realism in the 1950s saw silk artists illustrate female peasants and resistance fighters, among other topics. Generally, the female figure became a stereotype of Vietnameseness in painting, and silk painting clung to figuration; for instance, details such as women’s hair became an obsession of many silk painters pre- Doi Moi (economic reforms initiated in Vietnam from 1986). For Nguyễn, the legacy of the figurative silk painting goes hand in hand with characterisation of women in Vietnam. Women in Vietnam have been culturally defined as model archetypes, universally expected to be beautiful, strong and subservient. Nguyễn’s work exposes the duality that underlies such romantic social conventions through a visual iconography intended to express women’s unacknowledged experiences. The physical and psychological dichotomy for women is literally present in having painted figures on both the front and back of the silk. Faces look directly at the viewer, forcefully and unemotionally. With titles such as Hidden Dragon or Worlds Within , ideas of the entwining of visible and invisible, light and dark existence are accentuated by the compositions, choice of traditional or contemporary dress and symbolic elements, such as dragons: I borrowed the image of the dragon to talk about the inner contradictions within a person in general — and the fate of Vietnamese women in particular. We’re living in a world where values are upside down, people are increasingly torn between conflicts, between the virtues of good/positive (Blue Dragon) and evil/negative (Red Dragon). 1 Strength and beauty are also evident in Nguyễn’s work, representing the same expectations of behaviour placed on the artist’s gender. Nguyễn has devoted the works in APT10 ‘to grandmothers, mothers, sisters, girlfriends … who live around me and have an unstable life’. 2 In Inside of Us 4 2020, two contemporary faces are seen alongside a triptych ( Our Time 2021) that depicts three generations of women: the grandmother, who lived through what Nguyễn terms ‘a feudal society’ in Vietnam; the mother; and the modern woman of the artist’s generation. Their strength and power, represented by the dragon and the inclusion of faded flowers, creates a link across the ages, suggesting that the role of women remains untouched despite social change. Nguyễn deftly works with an historically relevant medium to address the sensitive changing expectations for women in her country. Her images of resilience offer a message of hope: We (women) are the flowers. No matter where we come from, which generation we’re in, which situation we have, how we look, what love we fall in … we must still bloom and perfume. Blooming and perfuming is the strongest way to help us fight confidently against this very sorrowful life. 3 These double-sided paintings bring to mind the boundaries maintained between public and private lives for women of all generations, everywhere, and the ways that women maintain the fragile balance of appearances. Zara Stanhope Endnotes 1 Nguyễn Thị Châu Giang, email to the author, 14 June 2020. 2 Nguyễn. 3 Nguyễn. Nguyễn Thị Châu Giang Born 1975, Hanoi, Vietnam Lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam