Mixed-media installation (rubber ropes, steel, tissues, acrylic paint, mica plastic, old newspaper). Dimensions variable.

Description

A foreign friend posed a question: Why did so many Vietnamese look sad and pensive? The artist asked himself: How come we, the descendants of the Dragon King and Fairy Goddess, seemed unhappy?

At the time, the press started reporting on corruption scandals, offenses by government officials, farmers’ losing land etc. It was a drastic change because previously the press had solely delivered praises. The artist collected said newspaper articles and collaged them into circular shapes, symbolic of Dragon eggs. Nguyễn Minh Phước made portrait photographs of passing strangers, scaled the images up, and printed them on transparent mica sheets arranged in parallel, forming the body of a Dragon hung in the center of the installation. Beholder sees many seemingly familiar faces subsumed under common anonymity, reads newspaper articles in the shape of Dragon eggs, and contemplates. The work is a ruminative critique of the social environment that the artist inhabits.

Description by ViAA based on materials provided by the artist.