Mountain Connecting Mountain, River Connecting River
Visual Arts
Description
Description
Ideas such as “boundary” and “Chineseness” are entangled in the complexity of histories in Southeast Asia. The situation between Vietnam and China is one example. Vietnamese artist Nguyễn Thế Sơn focuses on the cultural exchanges and shifting relationship between the two nations in the past 100 years. He is especially interested in the tension between identity and “Chineseness”, exploring this trajectory through photography and other art mediums.
The idea of the exhibition stems from a popular song (circulating since the 1960s) named “Mountain Connecting Mountain, River Connecting River”, which symbolized the warm relationship between Vietnam and China. Nguyễn tries to compare the differences between the Red River that he photographed in 2012 with the one described in the lyrics of the song. The photographs are paired with 6 lacquer panels, which features found images downloaded from the Internet of both countries. Each panel features a calligraphic inscription of one of the six characters that form the song title in Vietnamese. From his work, history and culture are linked through different visual signs. Viewers are allowed to think about the meaning of the artwork through their cultural and historical perspectives.
According to curator Zhuang Wubin, the education background of Nguyễn Thế Sơn, a Vietnamese who studied in Beijing, provides him a better understanding about the cultures and languages of the two nations. His education background also opens up more possibilities for Nguyễn to respond to identity and geopolitical issues. In this work, Nguyễn references the song’s afterlife to encourage viewers to reconsider how the political elites in Vietnam and China have maneuvered their longstanding relationship.
Lumenvisum is proud to work with Singaporean curator Zhuang Wubin to present Photography in Southeast Asia (III) –“Mountain Connecting Mountain, River Connecting River” (2012/2019), the solo exhibition of Nguyễn Thế Sơn. It is the first solo exhibition of the Vietnamese artist Nguyễn Thế Sơn in Hong Kong. This exhibition can be described as “open couplet”, encompassing a mixed-media installation that incorporates photography, lacquer work and calligraphy. It invites viewers to re-examine the ambiguous and tangible relationship, its past and present, between Vietnam and China.
Artist：Nguyễn Thế Sơn
Note：This event record is compiled from "Hong Kong Visual Arts Yearbook 2019" published by Department of Fine Arts, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
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