Building on The First Conference on Curating in Vietnam: Challenges and Opportunities (2024), co-organized by Á Space and the School of Interdisciplinary Studies and Arts – Vietnam National University Hanoi, our second edition of the conference returns after two and a half years with the title Curatorial Conference Vietnam II: Models for Independence. This edition takes place across two days, 28 and 29 November 2026, at Mơ Art Space, beside Hoàn Kiếm Lake, in an area witnessing major transformations in Hanoi.

While the first edition’s organizing committee was drawn from by Á Space’s Curatorial Board (Linh Lê, Vân Đỗ, Vũ Đức Toàn, and Châu Hoàng), this edition brings together an organizing team from different organizations: Đinh Thảo Linh from ba-bau AIR and Lê Thuận Uyên from The Outpost, alongside Á Space members Vân Đỗ, Đặng Thuỳ Anh, and Phạm Hà Ninh. Through their individual networks across Southeast Asia, each organiser has brought new perspectives and voices, placing familiar and unfamiliar contexts in dialogue to explore shared questions and concerns.

While retaining its Vietnamese name, this edition of the conference replaces “curating” with “curatorial” in its English title. This change reflects a shift in methodology: from the techniques and methods of curating towards recognising “the curatorial” across different processes and practices within contemporary art. Through this year’s discussions, we investigate how the curatorial operates not only in the work of curators, but also in other activities and processes that shape how art is encountered, mediated, and valued. This edition therefore brings together gallery owners, institution builders, collectors, researchers, artists, and other practitioners whose work is less often considered through a curatorial lens.

Taking “independence” as its point of departure, the conference seeks to examine how Southeast Asian art practitioners continually strive to create models responsive to their particular contexts, without being bound by predetermined conventions. In this process, how has the curatorial been present, expanded, or negotiated among practitioners working across different areas of the arts?

Moderated by five members of the organizing committee, the five panels open up critical questions concerning: the representational roles and responsibilities of collections in shaping art histories amid the shifting roles of the public and private sectors in Southeast Asia (Panel 1, moderated by Lê Thuận Uyên); the role of galleries in determining the value of artworks and guiding artists’ practices within the market (Panel 2, moderated by Phạm Hà Ninh); the shifting boundaries between the artistic and the curatorial (Panel 3, moderated by Đặng Thuỳ Anh);  the curatorial shapes and challenges of situating oneself and negotiating one’s position when working with communities and creating social infrastructure (Panel 4, moderated by Đinh Thảo Linh); and the possibilities for reimagining how institutions are built and operate (Panel 5, moderated by Vân Đỗ).

Speakers are invited not only to share lessons from practical experience, but also to reflect on the intentions, strategies, and specific approaches that shape their work, identifying broader models, methods, or operational logics that emerge from their practices. The aim is not to develop a fully resolved model, but to open up dialogue between different practices and contexts, proposing curatorial practice as a form of knowledge production.