Exhibition “Journey to a Green Vietnam”
http://hanoigrapevine.com/2014/11/exhibition-journey-to-a-green-vietnam/#.VGF07WeY_mo
From the organizer:
You are invited to the installation exhibition titled “Journey to a Green Vietnam”, a collaborated project between curator Tran Luong and talented artists: Nguyen The Son, Phan Thao Nguyen, Luong Hue Trinh, Truong Cong Tung, Tran Tuan.
Among the most emblematic artworks is “8m2″ by artist Nguyen The Son. This synthetic artwork simulates the 8m2 living space of workers in Southern industrial zones resulted from his journey to industrial zones.
Artist Nguyen Son states:
“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…”