11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Vase No. 10, Vase No. 8 2023 / Ceramic, handpainted; Vase No. 5 2023 / Ceramic, handpainted, crackle glaze (men rạn) / 145 × 40cm / Courtesy: The artist NOTES 1 The establishment of the village and its kilns dates to the tenth century. 2 Multiple forms of ceramics and pottery have been and continue to be produced in Việt Nam, beyond the widely known blue-and-white style once referred to as ‘Annamese’. Bùi Công Khánh’s early vases were exhibited in ‘The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (2009–10) as part of the Mekong Project. 3 Crackle glaze is produced from lime, rice husk ash and light pink kaolin clay. 4 Ancient Vietnamese literature was written in Chinese ideograms. After Việt Nam won its independence from one thousand years of Chinese rule, the Nôm script was adopted. However, this script was not standardised and was difficult for the broader population to master. The Jesuit priests, wanting to reach wider audiences, worked with local people to transliterate the Vietnamese language into Latin script with Portuguese phonetics to capture its unique tonalities. The result was the script known as Quoc Ngu, enforced as the official script by the French in 1910. 5 Until recent decades, both Vietnamese language and ceramics were dismissed by scholars as derivative of Chinese forms. BORN 1972, ĐÀNẴNG, VIỆTNAM LIVES+WORKS INHỘI AN+ BÁT TRÀNG, VIỆTNAM Bát Tràng — meaning ‘place of bowls’ in Vietnamese — is one of Việt Nam’s ancient pottery villages, operating as a centre of ceramics production and export since at least the fifteenth century. 1 Today, thousands of skilled ceramics producers live and work amid its narrow streets and paved courtyards. Bùi Công Khánh first became acquainted with Bát Tràng as a student, and since establishing himself as an artist has returned there for several months each year. In Bát Tràng, he does not work in a studio but in a production house alongside families of potters. Bùi Công Khánh started creating his own ceramics in the early 2000s. Combining the traditional shapes of Vietnamese blue-and-white wares, he replaced their vegetal and foliate motifs with drawings of contemporary Hà Nội life at a moment when the impact of globalisation was particularly felt. 2 Since that time, the artist has refined his techniques, resulting in remarkable bodies of work that are varied in scale, concept and expression. They include vases in glossy blues, reds and ivory-whites; colourful porcelain medals in reds, greens and gold leaf; plaques in which vines conceal tangles of medals and grenades; as well as an abacus frame populated with tiny ceramic human heads. On Bùi Công Khánh’s handpainted vases, repeating motifs construct cityscapes in which machines, humans and architectural features become giant, interconnected beings; wire fences and floating clouds, symbolising oppression and freedom respectively, intersect; and, more recently, linear rainbow patterns appear — representing his identity as a gay man, a subject he considers still largely taboo in Việt Nam. In the Asia Pacific Triennial, a carved jackfruit-wood work explores architectures and place, and the historic division between North and South Việt Nam. Between 2022 and 2023, Bùi Công Khánh created an impressively scaled collection of vases with innovative detail. Standing approximately 1.5 metres tall, each vase has a distinctive curved shape and rounded top. Some display the beautiful ivory-white crackle glaze characteristic of Bát Tràng, while others have a glossy finish. 3 Handpainted dragons, cityscapes, smoke, clouds, colourful human figures, drooping cobalt sunflowers and chrysalis-like human forms adorn the vases in profusion. The artist’s first venture into film, Tư liệu Bat Trang – bản dựng ( Bat Trang documents – renderings ) 2024, was inspired by the story of how the Latin alphabet came to Việt Nam. In the fifteenth century, Portuguese Jesuit missionaries introduced Latin script phonetically in collaboration with Vietnamese people from towns and villages, enabling its widespread adoption and, eventually, BÙI CÔNGKHÁNH the establishment of an accessible written national language. 4 Bùi Công Khánh felt the story encapsulated the broader cultural heritage of his country and how it has developed through trade and exchange over centuries while retaining its own distinct identity. 5 The documentary, also featured in this Triennial, is both a love letter to Bát Tràng and to the unique tonality of Vietnamese language, which resembles song. Using stories and metaphor to allude to the nuances and complexities of history and exchange, Bùi Công Khánh’s works represent Việt Nam’s present as entangled in its past, acknowledging hybridity as a source of its cultural strength and individuality. ABIGAIL BERNAL ARTISTS+PROJECTS ASIAPACIFICTRIENNIAL 66 — 67