#Schedule:

19h00—21h00, 07/07/2022.

#Location:

Ô Cách Temporary Market, Alley 59 Ngô Gia Tự, Long Biên, Hà Nội

#About our speakers:

Hà Ninh Pham (b. 1991) is a fine artist from Hanoi, Vietnam. His work explores how we build up our understanding of territories from afar. Hà Ninh Pham earned his MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2018 and his BFA from the Vietnam University of Fine Arts in 2014. His work has been featured on Hyperallergic, New American Paintings, and ArtandMarket. Hà Ninh has been in residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Corporation of Yaddo, Wassaic Project, the Marble House Project in the United States, and PLOP in the United Kingdom. His work has been shown in New York, London, Philadelphia, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh City. Hà Ninh Pham is represented by A+ Works of Art in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is currently Associate Lecturer at RMIT University Vietnam.
Lê Thuận Uyên is a curator/ writer based in Vietnam. She has recently been appointed as the Artistic Director of The Outpost – a privately funded organization dedicated to the development of visual art and culture, located in Hanoi. Driven by her former training in political science, Uyen is interested in alternative histories of Vietnam, exploring personal narratives that are rendered absent, sidelined or undesirable by the official record. Her curatorial projects often involve close collaboration with artists, seeking to unpack artistic articulations and stimulate critical, creative enquiries.  
Some of her past curatorial projects include: Domestic Bliss (Ilham Gallery, KL, 2019); Gang of Five Chancing Modern (Hanoi, 2017); Sindikat Campursari (Jakarta, 2016); Embedded South(s) (co-curator, Sàn Art, online, 2016); Skylines With Flying People 3 (co-curator, Hanoi, 2015-17); Miền Méo Miệng (assistant curator, Bildmuseet Umea, 2015);… She was a resident curator at Art in General (NYC) from April–August 2017 through a fellowship with the Asian Cultural Council. Lê has worked and collaborated with various artists, providing administrative support and programmes for spaces including Nhà Sàn Collective, Sàn Art, The Factory Centre for Contemporary Art, APD (Centre for Art Patronage and Development), The Nguyen Art Foundation.
#Program:
Á Space is delighted to introduce the discussion “Position X – Our position in the Ideology of Contemporary Art”. This is an event initiated and moderated by Hà Ninh with the participation of some guest speakers: Lê Thuận Uyên.
This discussion aims at exploring what Hà Ninh coins “Position X”, the position which Vietnamese Contemporary Art (VNCA) in the dominant phenomena and discourses in the international contemporary art scene today.
The idea of the “X position” originated from parallels that artists stumble across in their Vietnamese contemporary art practices:
– Vietnamese Contemporary Art lacks unified efforts but over-relies on communalized/generalized narratives
– Vietnamese Contemporary Art is predisposed to themes circulating benevolence, and humanities, but operated based upon the exploitative capital-centric metrics.
Through the artist’s presentation and participants’ responses, the open discussion looks forward to conceiving an open-minded environment attentive to answers for inquiries on “where are we locating ourselves?” and “what we ought to do?”. These are two seminal questions that we, the art practitioners, should always bear in mind.
The discussion will start with Hà Ninh’s presentation, which is followed up a response from a guest speaker, Lê Thuận Uyên. Total duration for this part is 60 minutes. The remaining of the discussion will be open for everyone.
References: https://bit.ly/3NrUaDd