No Place Like Home exhibition: Unearthing untold stories of migration

The exhibition, curated by KV Duong and Hoa Dung Clerget, relies on the An Viet Archive, a compilation of British-Vietnamese history since 1981, as its conceptual backbone. It is a thought-provoking exploration of the diversity and complexity of Vietnamese heritage art, knitting together history of inequality, environmental destruction, and authoritarianism with artists' own personal experiences and struggles.

Placed in the exhibition’s entrance is The Cityscape, an installation created using a stack of Vietnam's iconic plastic stools. The use of white tone colour for the stools and the large scale of the installation melts into one picture, provokes a sense of psychogeography and concrete structures of urban life within the artists' memoirs. Created in collaboration between Duong and Clerget, the piece first debuted at the Canning Town Gallery in London as a part of their inaugural ‘No Place Like Home’ exhibition in 2022. This year, the installation is accompanied by a sound piece by Cường Minh Bá Phạm, an artist who explores the intersections of sound, community, and archives, creating a harmonious interplay between visual and auditory elements.

By delving into the collective and personal understanding of life in an urban environment, the installation presents viewers with a layered perspective on the intricate relationship between land and its inhabitants. Through its poignant message, the piece evokes a sense of lamentation, encouraging viewers to contemplate the complex nature of our connection with the places we call home. The Cityscape's sombre and introspective tone fosters reflection on the dynamic interplay between our built environments and lived experiences, offering a compelling commentary on the impact of our surroundings on our perceptions of the wider community.

As viewers' eyes move from the centre of The Cityscape to the dining room through the shrine installation titled Displaced shelving by artist and co-curator KV Duong, they come across a collection of found objects presented as offerings to the gods. These offerings are everyday products – plastic mangosteen, Panda Bear cookies and soda cans – one might find in a Circle K or Vinmart supermarket in Vietnam. The objects are wrapped in white paint, offering a mere silhouette of their original forms. The paint alludes to the decay of the objects, creating a layered effect that suggests a static, omniscient view of the otherworldly.

The installation has a three tiered shelf and supports its objects as legs. On the top shelf, an incense burner from Bát Tràng village is placed in front of an image of the Goddess of Mercy, which has been transferred onto paper and displayed under a transparent box. The structures are as if they have been washed, sunburnt, plundered, and abandoned. However, this encasement obscures the work, giving it an ambiguous quality that invites closer inspection.

“Displaced shelving, placed within the historic context of the Museum, questions the meaning and experience of home for an immigrant family. Where is home for us and our ancestors, particularly in cases where family members perished at sea or displaced during the war?” said KV Duong.

Duong's skill in crafting metaphors for intangible concepts, such as time and probability, is particularly noteworthy. In his work, Displaced shelving, Duong portrays the shrine's ritual as a labyrinth in which we are bounced, retraced, and offered a vision of alternative paths. The paths do not dissipate when we leave, but extend endlessly into their details.

The exhibition's dining room takes centre stage, providing a stunning display of the vibrant and diverse world of Vietnamese ‘cuisine’. Within the space, works by Hoa Dung Clerget, KV Duong, Duong Thuy Nguyen, Carô Gervay, Koa Pham, Ap Nguyen, Cường Minh Bá Phạm, and Minh Lan Tran are presented on a low table plinth. Through a variety of media, the works evoke a range of moods and emotions through a variety of media. But they all are more than mere food porn, for each artwork uses food or tableware to tell the story of the people who cooked them, ate them, and used them as a medium to convey their day to day lives.

Throughout the exhibition, abstract forms are attached to ready-made objects, triggering dialogues between abstraction and figuration, lightness and heaviness. The juxtaposition of materials creates scenes suspended between reality and fantasy, defying definitive categorisation. Likewise, every installation is connected, overlapping in material and concept, creating an intricate and layered narrative.

“The exhibition is intended as a mixture of performance, meal sharing, where the artistic space is transformed into a place of social interaction and point of exchange. We want to create a community of a moment around a friendly encounter. This created micro-community recalls the importance of meal time in the families of Asian immigrants and reverses their situation of exile”, commented Hoa Dung Clerget.

Unpacking social taboos and exploring the day-to-day realities of life in Vietnam, No Place Like Home Part II reveals the untold stories of migration, unearthing sociopolitical issues, and exploring the nuances of memory and identity. The exhibition invites viewers to engage in a conversation about mobility, diaspora, and the evolving notions of home.