Homage to feminine beauty
Viet Nam News Asia News Network
Artists flirt with “Venus in Vietnam” in an exhibition at Ho Chi Minh’s Fine Arts Museum through next week.
Nguyen Nghia Cuong (born 1973) and Vu Dan Tan (1946-2009) are the stars of “Ve Nu o Vietnam”, but all attention is riveted on their depictions of feminine beauty as interpreted in terms of gender and sexuality.
It was a 2012 exhibition in Hanoi titled “Venus” that gave the public its first good look at Tan’s work. That show’s highlights were his delicate cardboard suitcases and female figurines placed inside cigarette boxes.
Tan was, during the 1980s, among the first to exhibit new styles in Vietnam, presenting multimedia and other forms and using everyday materials. He’s considered a pioneer in alternative genres in the “pre-doi moi (renovation) period” leading up to 1986.
His work was displayed at the Sculpture Triennial in Fellbach, Germany, in 2001 and at exhibitions in Japan, the Netherlands and Singapore.
Nguyen Nghia Cuong, a graduate of the Vietnam Fine Arts College, is known for his sense of irony. In his latest work, “Beauty High Quality”, he explores common features of popular culture and advertising.
The two-man exhibition in Ho Chi Minh City focuses on the beauty of women in the country’s social, cultural and political context at the end of the 20th and in the early 21st century.
The Goethe Institut organised the show and has arranged a talk featuring Cuong and the two curators, Natalia Kraevskaia and Iola Lenzi.
