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Vietnamese history told through art

Helen Clifton
20/ 2/2008

MANCHESTER Art Gallery’s latest show combines some searing social commentary with visual poetry.

Vietnam-based artist Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba uses his stunning and often bizarre artistic ideas to convey his great passion– the suffering and plight of displaced people worldwide and the often tragic loss of indigenous culture.

Born in Japan of Vietnamese parents and brought up in the US, Nguyen-Hatsushiba moved back to Ho Chi Minh City, the capital of his homeland, to practise his work and get closer to his origins. And there is plenty of material.

The Vietnamese people’s traditional way of life is under continual threat following the aftermath of the devastating US war, as well as the massive cultural changes heralded by the influx of western-style capitalism. Nguyen-Hatsushiba has documented changes via his strange and ethereal prints, films and sculpture.

His series of three underwater films characterise the weightlessness and rootlessness of people displaced, not just by having to leave their homelands but by the loss of their unique culture.

In one film, Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex – For the Courageous, the Curious and the Cowards, local fishermen pull and push rickshaws along the seabed in a ritualistic, pointless underwater journey, reflecting the gradual extinction of their livelihoods. Exhibitions curator Fiona Corridan describes the work as "beautiful." She says: "He is very well known for his underwater films – that is how he came to our attention. They are very visually stunning, as you can imagine. They have that beautiful blue underwater colour.

"He approaches his work from the standpoint of south-east Asia. He is trying to project a different perspective on to that history. People in that part of the world had to flee their homeland, and he tells the story of what happened to them."

Nguyen-Hatsushiba repeatedly uses clichéd symbols of Vietnam, like the rickshaw, throughout his work. But he manipulates their familiarity with a western audience to make a political point. The rickshaw, for example, has now been banned from certain inner city areas of Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s Ho Chi Minh City home.

His sculpture, The Globe Project: The Garden of the Globes, which was specially commissioned for the Manchester exhibition, features 1,000 metal balls suspended over soft, floaty material, reflecting the certainty of material progress versus spirituality.

Other new works include the film, The Ground, The Root and The Air: the Passing of the Bodhi Tree.

The film concentrates on progress versus tradition – but this time in the small south-east Asian nation of Laos. The country has gone from a state of rural poverty to being flooded with all the familiar symbols of materialism. The film depicts runners – wearing Mike trainers, the south-east Asian version of American brand Nike – jogging past the Bodhi tree, a revered symbol of Buddhism.

But Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s most surreal project to date, a bid to run the equivalent distance of the world over a period of seven years, has spawned a piece of work very personal to Manchester.

The ambitious physical feat, which he started in May 2007, has inspired a series of prints of world cities – including our very own rainy town.

The piece, entitled Breathing is Free: 12756.3 in reference to the exact circumference of the world in kilometres, depicts ferns overlaid on an image of the city in tribute to Manchester’s canal system.

Fiona adds: "He calls the canals our lifeblood. Like a plant, water flows through the city."