The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

‘Ancestors ate too much salt, so their descendants desire water.’ TRADITIONAL VIETNAMESE PROVERB This popular idiom about salt and the desire for water speaks of the historical nature of human motivations in the Vietnamese imagination — including the idea that the unfulfilled wishes of past generations are transmitted to, and manifested in, the living. 1 Illuminating the powerful works of Nguyen Thai Tuan, this metaphor may be applied to relationships between the dead and the surviving generations, as well as the past and present, in Vietnam. It is these relationships that are at the core of Nguyen Thai Tuan’s art. Recalling the potent images of the 1933 film adaption of HG Wells’s The Invisible Man (1897), Nguyen paints compelling and disembodied figures originating in Vietnam’s collective memory. These representations are an evocation of official state history and of what people are permitted to remember of Vietnam’s turbulent past. Lacking individual identities, the figures are anchored only by their attire and, to an extent, by their austere surroundings, which enhances the feeling of unease and the sense of dispossession. In his text ‘The ghosts of the American war in Vietnam’, anthropologist Heonik Kwon explores how the past provides a vital framework through which the Vietnamese negotiate and understand their recent history. Kwon reveals how the politically-engendered postwar institution of the heroic dead has relegated the memory of those who were killed — from the losing side — to the status of ghosts. These ‘ghosts’ are excluded from the new nation-state and, by extension, are alienated from family and community commemorations. 2 In a sense, these ghosts evoke the complexities of war and memory. Similarly, in his paintings, Nguyen gives form to absent figures who exist between the sanctioned memories of the state and those of family and community. For Nguyen, commemorating the nameless is both a creative and a moral practice. Nguyen’s ‘Black paintings’ 2008–09 depict a cast of Vietnamese figures — some historical, others contemporary — who are bled of identity, who are absent yet present. Faces are missing and lives are merely intimated by clothing and settings. Robbed of specificity, they become ghosts, lost to families and friends. Painted in a flat and simplified style, and lacking spatial and contextual references which heighten the sense of alienation, these ‘Black paintings’ demonstrate how the past and present in Vietnam is often censored, and how ‘types’ acceptable to the state are preferenced. Black painting no.45 2008 depicts a squatting figure with its back to the viewer, who can only be identified by the typical Vietcong pith helmet at its side. In Black painting no.80 2009, the individual is dressed in contemporary Western garments, his arms behind his back as if bound, the situation suggesting interrogation and associations of brutal control, a feeling enhanced by the harsh light and shadow. The blacked-out figure of a traditionally-clothed Vietnamese woman, in Black painting no.50 2008, sits on the edge of a vertiginous and dark doorway. In all these paintings, the physical loss of individual identity mirrors issues concerning displacement and remembrance in Vietnam today. History and memory are also central to Room of the prince 2010, which draws on Nguyen’s visit to the summer palace of Vietnam’s last emperor, Bao Dai, in Dalat. 3 Depicting a seated presence in the bedroom of Bao Dai’s son — perhaps it is the prince himself — the room’s art deco furnishings appear neglected and somewhat incongruous in contemporary Vietnam. For Nguyen, his interest lies in how the palace has passed through successive hands of colonialists and imperialists to the ‘new acquirers’ of the present-day, which is how he describes the ‘newly rich and powerful conclave of society’. 4 Nguyen explores how changing ownership has altered the way the past is now remembered. Today, the palace compound is touted as Bao Dai’s last residence, with no mention of prior or subsequent owners (the South Vietnamese and French regimes), and with no acknowledgment of the changing power dynamics in the country over time. The last 20 years has seen marked economic development in the country — encouraged by the present communist government — a trend which has altered the fabric of Vietnamese society. Nguyen Thai Tuan’s response is to paint powerful images imbued with a reflective stillness, commemorating Vietnam’s past at a time of dramatic change. Michael Hawker 1 Heonik Kwon, After the Massacre: Commemoration and Consolation in Ha My and My Lai , University of California Press, Berkeley, 2006, p.78. 2 Heonik Kwon, ‘The ghosts of the American war in Vietnam’, The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus , <http://japanfocus.org/-Heonik- kwon/2645>, viewed 21 May 2012. 3 Composed of three villas, designed and built by Robert Clement Bourgery in Dalat in 1933, Bao Dai’s Palace was the last seat of French colonial power during the Indochina period of rule (1887– 1954). This site is now a popular tourist ‘museum’. 4 Nguyen refers here to a small, yet influential, part of Vietnamese society, often descendants of the historical ‘proletariat’ cause. See Surface Asia Mag , <http://surfaceasiamag.com/read-news-5-0-313- school-of-thought.surfaceasia.magz>, viewed 18 May 2012. NGUYEN THAI TUAN Salt and water NGUYEN THAI TUAN Vietnam b.1965 Black painting no.80 2009 Oil on canvas / 130 x 110cm / Purchased 2011. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery 169