“8m2” project at “Journey to a Green Vietnam” Exhibition ← Back to the portfolio

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From the curiosity to experience a life different from one in a colorful prosperous city, I have joined a research group of the project ” Journey to a green Vietnam ” to visit an industrialized zone in the Southern part of the country in order to live a life like many farmers who left their rice fields to come to the big city, chasing their dreams for a better future. Thousands of individual lives with hundreds of reasons to leave their home villages have gathered here sharing life together in these tiny living spaces only a few meters square next to the industrialized zone, constantly working day and night without resting. These industrialized zones are considered to be the locomotive of the train in the campaign ” industrializing, modernizing” the country which has been working for 20 years since the Doi Moi ( New change policy) . These people – the ” workers” have lived a life that doesn’t belong to them. Witnessing the struggle of their daily living condition, being trapped in a tiny room of 8 m2, I truly understand the life of these people whose days and nights directly participated in the campaign of ” industrializing” the country. What can they gain from this trade off they have made? With my “8m2 square” photography project, I would like to document the smallest corners of that living space, I would like to borrow their household daily objects, letting them speak themselves.

I remember 8m2 was a standard, a minimum requirement of living space for one person during the subsidized economy, or even previous to that, it was the number of living space applied to the campaign ” housing improvement” since 1954. Nowadays, after half a century struggling, many people still have to toss and turn in that 8m2 square, but it is not 8 m2 square for just one person, at times it is 8m2 for 8 people…”

“8m2” project at “Journey to a Green Vietnam” Exhibition ← Back to the portfolio

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