I don’t own the logo obviously
一個提案。
越南為台灣第二多外籍配偶的母國，也是一個從未在威尼斯雙年展擁有國家館的國家，同時，台灣持續以非國家館身分在威尼斯前監獄（普里奇歐尼宮邸）展出。作品專注兩國共享經驗（殖民歷史、美軍行動、共產主義陰影），質疑定義的權威和檔案的侷限。
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當您步入展覽，一道臨時牆隔開了入口與展廳內部，上有展覽和每件作品的描述，如下所示。
臨時牆面可見展覽介紹和半掩的《離開者》（Trong Gia Nguyen，2014），一幅油畫棒作品，描繪藝術家父母越戰移民美國後，乘船遊園的全家福。左轉，角落可見《鴿子》（Xuân Hạ，2020），一尊未完成的大理石雕塑，其被神像工作室遺棄，藝術家拾回並置於舊雜誌《今日知識》上；經過它，進入展廳，同藝術家的相似作品《鴿子頭在哪裡？》（2020）位於臨時牆後，唯這次雜誌是《新世界》。展廳近側，右側牆面可見《創造生命即創造圓》（Tuan Andrew Nguyen，2020），一只越戰未爆彈製成的頌缽；左側牆面可見《羅立》（Tran Luong，2012），一件由紅領巾、它拍打胸口、它飛舞空中構成的三頻錄像；地面可見《Hiếu 在哪裡？》（Phạm Minh Hiếu，2024），一隻石膏翻模的藝術家手臂，當中馬達實時追蹤藝術家位置，在此食指指向展廳遠處，同其河內工作室方向。遠處，地面可見《古林採葉－西貢電車》（Võ Trân Châu，2019），一塊二手衣縫製的越南歷史場景馬賽克拼布；牆面從右至左為：《食指》（Trần Tuấn，2021），一根近 5000 個狗牌組成的食指，呈扣扳機姿勢；《除號》（Phi Phi Oanh，2016），一座 315 塊鋼磚堆疊的真人高方尖碑，質感由越南顏料所繪；《2.2.1861》（Danh Vo，2009），一封藝術家父親抄錄的信，原信為某人越南處決前夕致父親的信。
展覽質疑定義包容／排除的權威，其「空」渲染缺席感和檔案的侷限：扭曲不可避免地發生在語言與影像之後，而世界更加廣闊，更加模糊。
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A proposal.
Vietnam is the home country with the second largest number of foreign spouses in Taiwan, and a country that has never had a national pavilion at Venice Biennale; meanwhile, Taiwan continues to exhibit—without mentioning it as national participation—at Palazzo delle Prigioni, a former prison in Venice. The work focuses on the shared experiences of both countries (colonial modernization, United States military operation, spectre of communism), questioning the authority that defines inclusion/exclusion and the limitation of archive.
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“Venice Biennale: Vietnam Pavilion” is a paper exhibition of Vietnam, country that has never had a national pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and it wasn’t until 2024 that an artist there was invited to participate the main exhibition for the first time. The exhibition brings together the works of nine Vietnamese artists—all of which are shown as documentation—revolving around the axes of memory, displacement, and archive. The term “paper exhibition” refers both metaphorically to its idealistic quality and literally to taking documentation as an alternative way to resist the gentrification of today art world, for it’s low-cost and accessible, echoing visual experience and open source trend in the Internet era.
When one enters the show, there’s a provisional wall separates the entrance and the interior of the exhibition. On the right wall is a description of the exhibition, introducing the deployment and each work in order, as mentioned below.
The title of the exhibition and partly-revealed Trong Gia Nguyen’s The Leavers (2014), an oil pastels painting of artist’s family photo (where his parents took a boat at the park after immigrating to the States after Vietnam War) are shown on the provisional wall.
Turn left and you see around the corner Xuân Hạ’s Pigeon (2020), a found unfinished marble carving abandoned by the studio producing spiritual idols and placed on vintage magazines “Knowledge Today”; across it you enter the exhibition room, Hạ’s Where are the pigeon heads? (2020), a similar piece on “New World,” is found on the back of the provisional wall.
In the near side of room, right wall showed Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s To Make A Life Is To Make A Circle (2020), a singing bowl made of unexploded ordnance from the Vietnam War, the left a mural-size Tran Luong’s Lap Lòe (2012), a three-channel video of red scarf, the artist’s chest being beaten by it, and it flying in the air, the center ground Phạm Minh Hiếu’s Where is Hieu? (2024), a plaster model of artist’s arm on motor, tracking the artist’s movements in real-time, and here its forefinger pointing to the far side of room, same direction as the artist’s studio in Hanoi, Vietnam.
In the far side, you first encounter on the ground Võ Trân Châu’s Leaf Picking in the Ancient Forest - Saigon Tram (2019), a mosaic patchwork by second-hand clothes whose pattern comes from lost scene in Vietnam; on the wall from right to left are: Trần Tuấn’s Forefinger (2021), a forefinger made of nearly 5,000 dog tags, in the posture of pulling a trigger; Phi Phi Oanh’s Obelus (2016), 315 steel “bricks” with texture painted with Vietnamese paint, stacked into a life-size obelisk; Danh Vo’s 2.2.1861 (2009), artist’s father’s copy of the letter by French Catholic to his father in 1861 before execution in Vietnam.
The exhibition questions the authority that defines inclusion/exclusion and its “emptiness” highlights the sense of absence and the limitation of archive: both language and image inevitably distort after classification and organization while the world out there remains broader and much more ambiguous.