In Vietnam
Nguyen Hoang Bao Ngoc
Born from Vietnamese parents in 1975 and brought up in France, Sandrine Llouquet came to live in Vietnam in 1997, and studied for one year at Ho Chi Minh City Fine Art University. There she learnt about Vietnamese traditional art making techniques such as lacquer painting, woodcuts and silk painting. She is one of several overseas Vietnamese artists that have decided to live and work in Vietnam. Others include Dinh Q. Le, Rich Tran, Tiffany Chung and an artist who has Vietnamese blood, Jun Nguyen Hatsushiba. These artists have infused a fresh spirit in Vietnamese contemporary art. In December 2005 I met with Miss Sandrine and discussed her art and life in Vietnam.
Nguyen Hoang Bao Ngoc: Being born and brought up in France, what motivated you to live and work in Vietnam?
Sandrine Llouquet: I came in 1997 as I was still student at the fine art school from Nice, in France. I came to study for one year at the fine art university of HCM city. I met several artists at this time and keep contact with them until now. Since 2004 I came back three times and now I’m living here. I see how Vietnam is developing and how artists want to learn more about art of other countries. They try to experiment new things and I think it’s very interesting to be part of this dynamic.
NHBN: After your very successful exhibition "Troi O’I" at the Quynh Gallery, Ho Chi Minh City, can you reveal the next plan to everybody?
SL: I came with my group Wonderful District to develop exchanges between foreign artists and Vietnamese artists by organizing workshops, residences, exhibitions. It’s a long and hard work and I’m focusing on this now, in the same time I continue to create my own artwork.
NHBN: How do you feel about the current generation of young Vietnamese artists?
SL: Most of the artists I know are from my generation. It’s interesting to see how they try to develop their work. The more curious of them are traveling; they go on the internet to get information about art. I think what is missing is to have real exchanges between artists. Artists must meet to speak together about art, about their research in art, they need to criticize themselves, not in a negative way but to make their research progress.
NHBN: What is Wonderful District? How did you meet Bartrand Peret and Ghislain Merat and why did you decide to form a group?
SL: As I said before, Wonderful District is a project we started to build with Ghislain Merat and Bertrand Peret two years ago. This project aims to bring information about art to Vietnam through workshops, residences, lectures, exhibitions, concerts etc: I met Bertrand Peret seven years ago and we started to work together. We had in France a non-profit association called Wonderful, and we organized different group exhibitions and concerts, we also published an art magazine during this two years called 5eme mur, which means "fifth wall." In 2003 we went to the Congo to animate a workshop with African artists. Ghislain Merat was the coordinator of this project; he was working for the European Union. We met him at this time and decided to work together on a new project. One year later, two other people joined us, Karen Maldonado (actress) and Jerome Breger (sound engineer).
NHBN: Do you collaborate with Vietnamese artists?
SL: I did collaboration with Tran Kim Ngoc, the composer from Hanoi, but it was very quick. It was for an event where Wonderful District invited her to do a video animation, to show during her performance.
NHBN: What is the Vietnamese art community in Saigon like?
Sandrine: I think there are some very curious and interesting artists in Saigon, but they seem to work in isolation. There is no real group of artists like in Hanoi. Maybe artists in Saigon are more individual, or maybe it’s because there is no structure or meeting place for them to exchange ideas and discuss their work.
NHBN: How was your work received by the Vietnamese audience and artists?
SL: I had very good returns; people were also very surprised about the work, the materials I used. Some of them cannot imagine that art is something else than painting on canvas or sculpture. They are surprised also that an artist can do a work especially for an exhibition.
NHBN: Can you tell me more about the current project of Wonderful District? Do you intend to have your own building, a kind of Art Center, or will you find buildings as you need them and use them temporarily for specific projects?
SL: The initial project of Wonderful District was to have a kind of art center, which would receive workshops we would organize, exhibitions, residences and lectures. We wanted to find a big place in Saigon to do that, but we didn’t find it. For the moment we are working with other places we use temporarily, for specific projects. We will also organize small things (presentations of works) in a small place we found in Saigon. Our big project at the moment is also the creation of an art magazine.
NHBN: How much progress have you made so far in achieving the aims of your project?
SL: We know more and more people in Vietnam, especially artists. So we start to realize how much it is important for young people (young artists and students) to discuss with other artists to understand their work, to read books, art magazines. We understood that our project is very ambitious and that we have to progress step by step.
NHBN: "Troi Oi" was the name of your exhibition in Quynh Gallery, can you explain why you called it by this name?
SL: I like words that can have different interpretations. In my art also, I try to make art that can be read in different ways. For me the public must not be passive and just come and think, it’s beautiful or it’s not beautiful. The public has to work also (to think, to imagine) when they come to an exhibition. I want each person to imagine his own story when they look to my work. "Troi oi!" is interesting for me because it’s a very general expression. In Vietnamese, you say "Troi oi!" every time you are surprised, or you think something is very good or also very bad. In my exhibition, all the works I showed were about flying, or the impossibility of flying. This included sculptures of planes in concrete, a video of an insect wing being held by an ant or an animation of people falling into infinity and drawings of people with wings, so it links very much to the sky ["troi"]. I also was hoping that people would be surprised by my exhibition, because not only did I install my art works in the space, I also modified the architecture of the gallery to suit my work, I built two walls more.
NHBN: Can you explain the artworks that you showed there?
SL: As I told you just before, all the works were around the idea of falling or flying or trying to fly. It’s linked to a feeling of freedom, of taking risks. But as I said I want people to have their own interpretation of the work. I want to stimulate the imagination of the public. What I can explain is more the process of building the exhibition. With Quynh, the gallery owner, we decided first to show one of my animations. I was working on the animation of the people falling, so I proposed it to Quynh for the exhibition. Because it’s like a rain of human people, coming from the top to the bottom, I wanted to project it on an entire wall, but to see a video projection well we need to have darkness. So I decided to paint on the windows to obscure the room. I decided also to make drawings, but in a dark room, it’s difficult to see small drawings, so I decided to draw on mica and to make light boxes with drawings and to build a wall to incase my drawings in. There was still too much light to see the animation well, so I decided to build another wall just at the entrance of the gallery to cut the light. I was also interested by the concrete floor of the gallery; it remained me of an old work I did five years ago in France. I decided to do a new version of this work. It was the sculptures of planes on concrete, I thought it also linked to the people flying and falling.
NHBN: So it seems that you have two missions in Vietnam, one to help Vietnamese artists through the work of Wonderful District and two, to create your own art here. Do you consider these to be separate elements in your life, or are they related to each other as one?
SL: They are very much related, because in my own art work, I’m always thinking about how to show art, where, who will be the public? I think every artist must also consider these questions and the best way is to meet artists, discover other works and share their ideas.
NHBN: Do you have adequate time to concentrate on both?
SL: I have always worked like this, in France I was also organizing art events and publishing a magazine with the artist Bertrand Peret. My group work feeds my personal artwork and vice versa.
NHBN: I wish you every success with your work, in conclusion is there one message that you would like to give to young artists in Vietnam, something that might be helpful for their future?
SL: Just that for me to be artist is like being all your life studying, learning and experimenting. I think not only artists but all people have to be curious, look for new things to discover, form your own opinions. In art it is the same, you have to see many different kinds of art works and try to analyze them, to know really what you like or not, what is interesting or not.
