ACC alumnus Trần Minh Đức was born 1982, nearly 7 years after the American War (internationally known as Vietnam War) in Ho Chi Minh City (formal name was Saigon pre 1975), Vietnam. Đức grows up with his none understanding of the wartime and only with random stories from his own family relatives, grandparents and parents who directly got involved in such time. Along with his own memories with changes every day every year in the largest city in Vietnam located in the South side of Vietnam, war remnants to him were redesigned war objects to be household facilities within family, neighborhood playgrounds with friends at not yet renovated center of city's streets and tastes of out of expiry date foods and sweets.
Trần later joined and graduated from College of Culture and Arts of HCMC. Practising and experimenting as a visual artist in the city with the slow growth of contemporary art flows, he more and more put more interest to the narration of history by informal resources of information, word of mouth tales and shared personal memories.
During this 3 month time in Jeju Island, Đức put himself's view at a position of a Vietnamese child who was born after Vietnam War, seeing hearing reading information lines about Jeju 4.3 incident, with the end of WW2 that happened with the involvement of the Japanese, the American the Russian then later the split of North and South Korea - which is similar to Vietnam’s situation in the past.
The composition of the exhibition - presentation is with installations of found objects from Vietnam war surplus market and recorded sounds and voices of survivors in videos displayed at Jeju 4.3 Peace Park Museum. The most visible visual is created by the parachutes bought from war surplus market located in the center of Ho Chi Minh City, they are parachutes from illuminating flare remnants. The are sold in the market by vendeurs with introduction of specific words for Vietnam War objects aiming to collectors and foreign tourists. With his project, Đức colors all the parachutes into pink color as an action of putting layer upon history stories and objects, it is like the aims of war market vendeurs of making stories on all products that they sell whatever that are true or false. That is also similar to history and all what happened in the past, there are always lies and truths, also secrets that are hidden to all people that we all could not find the answer.
The presentation of art works is like a wish of harmony between places and spaces, where there would be no separation of geography border nor discrimination of colors and symbol of festive occasion, places and spaces where at spring time, pink flowers would blossom everywhere with the great harmony of happiness.
Pink flowers blossom here there and everywhere every past and upcoming springtime
August 29, 2019 - October 27, 2019
Location: | 13 Geo-ro Nam 6(yuk)-gil, Hwabugi-dong, Cheju, Jeju-do, South Korea
Korea |
Event Type: | Alumni EventExhibition |
Grantee(s): | Minh Duc Tran |