Art exhibition seeds the future

Artist Tuấn Mami (left) introduces his works at the exhibition opening ceremony. — Photo courtesy of the artist

HÀ NỘI — A solo exhibition by Vietnamese artist Tuấn Mami has opened at Kuandu Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan.

The exhibition A Silent Process is a part of a ten-year project carried out by Tuấn researching the Vietnamese community in Taiwan.

Visitors are guided through the performative installation taken first to Vietnamese mats where boxes of soil contain various types of native Vietnamese seeds such as vegetables, roots, fruits, herbs and medicinal plants. The artwork invites everyone to sit down together and create soil balls with one to two seeds inside to share them with others.

“This project is showing a powerful ‘togetherness’ in Vietnamese community in Taiwan through the growing process of this garden and growing community around it,” said Tuấn.

“It is living process without the end, so I am looking forward to see its future without borders and limitation and hopefully it can contribute to our modern ‘nomadic’ life.”

During his work, the artist met many people including Vietnamese brides, labourers and students. They are in Taiwan but still miss their homeland and the smells and tastes from home.

Tuấn also found that they try to collect Vietnamese plants to grow, from on a small rooftop of their houses to the balcony of a school’s dorms, on the side of a factory or even in random empty spaces on the side of a street.

But it is not easy to make that their little wish of a homeland grow, because many of them work hard every day from morning to midnight and it is illegal to bring seeds, plants or even fruits into Taiwan.

Through the garden and stories of people and their plants, Tuấn wants to discover how the relationship of food and concept of home impacts their mentality and their daily life.

The project aims to create a hope for diaspora and has received support from Kuandu Museum and the Vietnamese-Taiwanese community.

Tuấn is an interdisciplinary-experimental artist, working with site-specific installation, video, performance and conceptual art, who constantly explores new mediums, means and methods of evolving with reflective questioning.

​His focus deals with questions about life, social interactions between people and their environment, to re-construct situations into ones that engage people or objects from particular reality to enter and involve together in a social process.

Other than being as a creator, he is co-founder and artistic director of Á Space – An experimental Art Space.

The exhibition runs until October 23 at Kuandu Museum. — VNS