The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

126 Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba Breathing is free Central to Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s work is the socioeconomic change brought to postwar Vietnam by the rising tide of globalisation. In considering this issue, however, the artist takes a broad view; he does not identify himself with one single country making up his heritage — Japan (his mother’s country, and where he was born), the United States (where he was raised), or Vietnam (his father’s country and where he has lived since 1997). Rather, he moves fluidly between them, drawing on all three cultures. Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s memorials to the plights of his compatriots — the ‘boat people’ who left Vietnam to seek freedom, only to become refugees — are attempts at ensuring the problems of refugees worldwide are in the forefront of peoples’ minds. Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s practice has taken multiple forms since 1994, with his drawings, sculptures, performances and installations consistently referencing local motifs such as rice, mosquito nets, dragons and cyclos. His ‘Memorial project’ video series, a suite of four films shot between 2001 and 2003, is particularly noteworthy 1 — Nguyen-Hatsushiba aligned imagery of figures floating underwater with acts of mourning victims of war and environmental destruction. This poetic approach, alerting audiences to social concerns, has brought him wide acclaim internationally. The video work The Ground, the Root, and the Air: The Passing of the Bodhi Tree 2004–07 was realised in cooperation with 50 students from the School of Fine Arts in Luang Prabang in Laos, an ancient city experiencing the influence of global market forces. However, it differs from Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s ‘Memorial project’ series in that its social messages are treated more abstractly, contributing to its beauty and lyricism. The film features the students sketching the spectacular landscape along the Mekong River as they sweep along it on their wooden motorboats. When the boats near a sacred Bodhi tree on the riverbank, some of the students suddenly leap into the water and swim towards it, as if led by the Buddhist chants on the soundtrack. This act may be interpreted as the silent will of the Laotian people to maintain the flow of Buddha’s spirit, even as multinational capital pours into the country. It could also be read as an attempt to locate oneself in the great cycle of life, recognising that each one of us is a part of it. As the work approaches its serene yet dramatic climax, we gradually see these tensions appear and disappear in the drift of eternal time that the Mekong symbolises. The work of Nguyen-Hatsushiba both recognises history and steps into the future. He has worked with the people of Nha Trang in Vietnam, and Okinawa and Minamata in Japan — who bear the historical scars of war and pollution — inviting them to perform in his underwater works. In his ongoing running project, Breathing is free: 12,756.3 for global refugee crisis , which he began in 2007, Nguyen- Hatsushiba aims to run the shortest distance to the other side of the earth (12 756.3 kilometres, the earth’s diameter), as a metaphor for the refugee’s unfulfilled wish to escape to the polar opposite of their circumstances. The bodies of his performers are subjected to tough conditions, entering territory somewhat beyond their control. Air is a metaphor for freedom in Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s work; breathing is free, indeed. People struggle underwater, on the ground, or in the river, to release themselves and to find freedom, and when they finally do, it offers a vision of hope for the future. Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba encourages a realist approach to his work: ‘My work might look political, but I am not here to take sides on which perspective is correct’. 2 The magic of art does not lie in political correctness or in the direct quotation of a real situation. It is far more effective to engage viewers through beauty based on reality and tangibility. In examining society’s realities, Nguyen-Hatsushiba says, ‘what I need to create at the end must present itself as magic’. 3 Shihoko Iida Endnotes 1 Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the complex — For the courageous, the curious, and the cowards 2001; Happy New Year: Memorial Project Vietnam II 2003; Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas: Battle of Easel Point — Memorial Project Okinawa 2003; and Memorial Project Minamata: Neither either nor neither — A love story 2002–03. 2 Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, interview by Fernando Galán, art.es , no.1, 2004, p.59. 3 Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, email to the author, 4 July 2008.