Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba was originally a painter, but devotes his time today essentially to video and installation, which he combines with performance. Because of his triple identity – Vietnamese, Japanese, and American – the artist takes a unique look at the history of Vietnam, concerning himself mainly with the post-war period. Through the use of materials and objects recalling everyday life in Vietnam and its disparate economy (rice, dried fruit peels, mosquito nets, rickshaws, visiting cards...), in his work the artist goes into the impact of historical events on present-day Vietnam, between tradition and modernity, in a perspective of collective memory. Since 1994, his work has thus been organized around a memorial project for the thousands of Boat People who tried to flee from Vietnam at the end of the war, fearful of political reprisals. The installation Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex - For the Courageous, the Curious, and the Cowards is one of the links in this project. It consists of a projection in a dark room of a 13-minute sound and colour video, shot entirely underwater at Nha Trang in Vietnam: six characters (fishermen whom the artist met on the spot) try to escape underwater, struggling greatly to pull three rickshaws over the rocky, sandy ocean bed. The weight of the rickshaws, the difficulty of moving underwater and the divers' need to swim back up to the surface from time to time to get their breath back, all underscore the tricky and hazardous nature of this slow “performance”, at once chaotic-looking and dreamlike. This procession over, the men abandon their rickshaws and discover, a few yards further on, several mosquito nets affixed to the bed of the azure ocean, lightly tossed by the current. For Nguyen-Hatsushiba, the mosquito net – that simplest of shelters – here acts as a grave for the souls of people who perished in their attempt to flee from Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in the summer of 1975. The procession thus takes on a mnemonic value, a kind of pilgrimage with a poetic aspect, wishing to pay tribute to the Boat People. The rickshaw, symbol of southeast Asian cities, also refers to the consequences of the war, but from an economic and social viewpoint: many soldiers became rickshawmen at the end of the war, while the present Vietnamese government is keen to get rid of rickshaws, on the pretext that they reflect an old-fashioned economy. As the first section of a trilogy, Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam, is followed by the work Happy New Year – Memorial Project Vietnam II (2003), consisting of a dragon dance filmed underwater and accompanied by an undersea firework display, commemorating the surprise Tet offensive, on 31 January 1968, the day of the Chinese New Year, by North Vietnamese troops.

Frédérique Baumgartner
Translated by Simon Pleasance