"A video of a happier time that I and my delightful assistant Tú Anh shot at the end of 2019 when I went to Viet Nam with my costumes to exhibit at Flamingo Dai Lai out in the outskirts of Hanoi near the Airport. Now the resort and exhibition are temporarily closed because of Covid-19 hopefully to reopen soon. It is really a big resort with acres and acres of beautiful land and outdoor sculptures and they will be building a big museum. The piece they chose of mine will go into that museum that they open in the next 5 years. In the meantime, they are collecting art for it. it was such a strange episode, compared to my other travels, that is to carry my work to Vietnam to this luxury resort hotel the Flamingo Dai Lai. Well I brought maybe 5 years of my life of artwork I made from 1994 to 1998. The works had been stored in our barns coming out occasionally for exhibitions when I do a performance. This place will be my artworks new home. You can see in the video the colored containers that they made galleries out of. This time it was a show of lacquer artists.
It was a ritual for me to shed her (my artwork) and say good bye. we slept some nights together and she (the costume "Tea and the Twig “} had been my companion from 1997 -1999 in many performances and exhibition. kept saying goodbye and I slept with her and she was good company but now she will live a new life. I felt guilty for leaving her. She is a part of me. But she will be left there here with some of my other costumes for a year before they are sent back. The Flamingo Dai Lai is set up to appreciate the arts or to educate the new generations about the arts. I arrived with my costumes and slept staying a few nights with it in the recent art colony that will be its new home. it was so great. Such a sterile and perfect resort for the 8 days until the opening/farewell party. I did a performance amongst the wooden sculpture of Katsumi Mukai and the other exhibits of the lacquer artists who had contributed to the shows in the containers and the people were so fun living and played with my puppets and we danced as you will see in this video. They fed us many delicious things and I did not have to do anything. I got some good photos of me riding a bicycle in costume
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When the opening and celebration was all over I went back to the wild and lively streets of Hanoi wandering through the night and listening to the street music and performances on a Sunday night.. I met friends from the exhibition who had also given up their artworks (with some pay) like I did for the project. A nice man warmly took me to an old Vietnam master of lacquer painting on the outskirts of Hanoi Westlake area. We had young pale-yellow rice sprouts and tea for snacks under fluorescent lights in their home while discussing art. For me it was mass Excitement for me to tour through the city on the back of a bike. It was like going back into my youth. Next day I visited visit Công Kim Hoa one of the other lady artists who was collected at Flamingo Dai Lai. We spent some time together as I bought lacquer and gold leaf eating another delicious meal of succulent fish cake in a cozy crowded lunchtime setting.
This whole trip was a foodie trip of delights! I had never tasted pressed fish steaks. People were so kind. I was taken to another exhibition of contemporary art organized by. Trinh Tuan. International artists would make a work in 4 days. or the exhibition
I walked through the old palace in Hanoi as it turned into dusk then dusk into dark and then walked through the uneven sidewalks in the shadows across town carrying all my lacquer only to arrive at another feast an old Vietnamese French restaurant with balconies and friends. So many tastes. Shadows in the buildings walking home to Trinh Tuan family studio and grateful to be in the embrace of friends.
I struggled with taking my pigments that I had bought in Viet Nam out of China though airport checkpoint-they took them out and tried to light them with a match.. I was approached to make designs that could be made into lacquer paintings. How can we preserve this craft that is dying as all traditional handcrafts are Seemed that incorporating lacquer into fine art or employing the skilled craftsmen to help us to make modern works in natural lacquer would help preserve the traditional craft? They would be quite expensive. The natural lacquer artists in Vietnam wanted the distinction between natural lacquer and chemical lacquer to be made public.Need a grant for that!
they want the direction to remain vague, even in the exhibition room next to mine. Many of the beautiful works were made with chemical lacquer. The traditional lacquer has a deeper denser sensation.
anyway
goodbye
goodnight
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