Western Morning News (Saturday)
Fantastic feast of Vietnamese artistry
Frank Ruhrmund sees the mesmerising work of Thao Nguyen Phan, at the Tate St Ives
There can’t be many as proficient and polished in so many disciplines, everything from painting and sculpture to storytellng and the making of video and film, as the Vietnamese artist Thao Nguyen Phan, currently enjoying the most extensive exhibition of her work yet held in this country at Tate St Ives.
Her installation No Jude Cloth for the Bones, a collection of hanging jute stalks from which cloth and ropes, sacking and mats, are made, is used here as a neat device for separating the film and static works, and through which one is invited to walk.
The artist dedicates it to all those lost in war and famine, and carries echoes of the three Indochinese Wars, of the French, the Americans and the Chinese, with which Vietnam was involved in the 20th century, and reminds one of all the historical and ecological issues that have faced, and still face, the country.
It also makes one wonder if Thao Nguyen Phan’s path has ever crossed that of the Kenyan writer Ngugi na Thiongo, who reckoned that, “The arts act like a reflective mirror, and the artist is like the hand that holds and moves the mirror, this way and that way, to explore all corners of the universe. But what is reflected in the mirror depends on where the holder stands in relation to the object.”
In a manner of speaking, it could be said that Thao Nguyen Phan stands on the bank of the mighty Mekong river, which springs from Tibet and runs through China, Myanmar, Thailand Laos and Cambodia, before meeting the sea on the coast of Vietnam, where its delta happens to be one of the greatest rice growing areas in Asia. Standing on that bank reflecting upon the history and geography, “beauty and suffering”, of this giant watery expanse, the artist has produced First Rain, Brise Soleil, a striking new multi-channel film commission, plus an accompanying series of paintings.
To quote Anne Barlow, Director of Tate St Ives, who has curated this exhibition so skilfully along with Giles Jackson, Assistant Curator: “Thao Nguyen Phan’s work intertwines mythology and folklore with urgent issues, industrialisation, food, security and the environment. The threat posed by the destruction and excessive consumption of Earth’s resources is a recurring theme across her practice. Her latest new work continues her exploration of the Mekong river, proposing a new way of being that draws on indigenous knowledge and respect of the ecosystem.”
From the three-channel film Mute Grain, which tells of the Vietnamese famine of 1945-6, and is believed to have resulted in the loss of 2,000,000 lives, to Dream of March and August (2018-ongoing) a series of suspended watercolour on silk paintings which expands upon the tale of the “hungry ghost” siblings Ba (March) and his sister Tam (August).
There is much to see and enjoy here. I say enjoy advisedly, as this could so easily have been a tale of the misfortunes of war-torn Vietnam, but instead, filled with hope, it is one that looks at the present and future of the country rather than its past, and is as refreshing as it is reassuring.
It has been said that “Through her layering or blending of film and animation, image and text, she creates effects that are filmic within painting and painting within film, generating a sensation of the tangible in the intangible, the real in the illusory and the illusory in the real.”
Memorable and mesmerising, this exhibition by the Vietnamese visual multimedia artist Thao Nguyen Phan, who trained as a painter at the Ho Chi Minh University of Fine Arts, Vietnam, can be seen in Tate St Ives until May 2.