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Far From Indochine engages with the myths and ideas that shaped modernism and inform contemporary imaginings of Southeast Asia. In conversation with the recent 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, the exhibition brings together five artists from France and the U.S. Through film, photography, sculpture and embroidered cloth, these artists provoke questions about perceptions of and in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The exhibition is an assemblage of illegible screens that recall and refract fantasies about another world.

Organized by curator Chương-Đài Võ, Far From Indochine features three projects by Dewey Ambrosino, Patty Chang, David Kelley, Frédéric Dialynas Sanchez, and Jean-Sébastien Grill.

Route 3, a film by Patty Chang and David Kelley, takes viewers along a new Silk Road that serves as a stage for local and transnational imaginings about modernity in Laos. Multiple storylines and images pop in and out of the frames, continually interrupting each other and unsettling narratives of economic development.

The installation Hiding in the Light by Dewey Ambrosino offers a ghostly dance of night-vision photographs of an insect farm in Cambodia, and a sculpture of a Hindu and Buddhist protector deity. The juxtaposition of the mundane and the spiritual aligns with centuries-old practices that view the micro within the infinite time and space of the cosmic.

Triangle, by Frédéric Dialynas Sanchez and Jean-Sébastien Grill, plays with the celebratory and conflicting politics of nationalism by merging the Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Laotian flags. The billboard-size cloth decontextualizes political symbols, appropriating the authority of the state and advertisements for the desires and platitudes of global capitalism.

Far From Indochine addresses definitions of the modern and the contemporary, the blurry boundaries between appropriation and innovation, and artistic and curatorial strategies in and about Asia. The exhibition originated as part of the Curatorial Opportunity Program at New Art Center in Newtonville, MA.
 

About the Artists

Dewey Ambrosino received undergraduate degrees in sculpture and industrial design from University of Illinois, Chicago, and an MFA in Art from CalArts. Based in Los Angeles, he is a current faculty member at CalArts and Art Center College of Design. His practice examines the relationship between aesthetic phenomena and cultural conditioning through a wide variety of media. Ambrosino has performed and exhibited throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

Patty Chang works primarily with performance and video art. She has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as Museum of Modern Art, New York; New Museum, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museet Moderna, Stockholm, Sweden; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Fri-Art Centre d’Art Contemporain Kunsthalle, Fribourg, Switzerland. Chang is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient.

Jean-Sébastien Grill is a graphic designer based in Nancy, France. An advocate of “Do It Yourself” and nomadism, Grill studied visual arts at ESAL in Metz and Épinal (2002/2007). Since 2010, he and Frédéric Dialynas Sanchez have worked together on projects in Geneva, Dijon, Mosset, Saigon, and Shanghai. Their video Night at The Observatory was shown in Amsterdam while their flip book Night on Earth was published in (Re)Collecting the Vietnam War, a special issue of The Asian American Literary Review.

David Kelley’s work is research based, internationally produced video installation, and photography. His recent projects dealt with themes of infrastructure space, modernization, landscape, the margins of art history and the instrumentalization of art in the built environment. His work has been shown at Museum of Modern Art in New York; DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA; Commonwealth and Council in Los Angeles; MAAP Space in Brisbane; Bank in Shanghai; and Beirut in Cairo. Kelley is an assistant professor of art at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

Frédéric Dialynas Sanchez lives and works in France and Vietnam. He completed postgraduate studies in Lyon (ENBA, 2008/2009) and Shanghai (École Offshore, 2013/2014). His work focuses on abstraction, collective identities, and cultural bricolage. He has participated in numerous projects in Saigon, Hanoi, Shanghai, New York, Boston, Montréal, Fujiyoshida, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Vienna, and Paris.
 

Curator

Chương-Đài Võ is an independent curator based in Hong Kong, where she works for Asia Art Archive as the researcher for Southeast Asia. Her exhibitions have been selected in curatorial competitions sponsored by apexart in New York City, New Art Center in the Boston area, and Dorsky Gallery in Long Island City. She is a former Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has received fellowships and grants from Asian Cultural Council, Fulbright Program, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and University of California Pacific Rim Research Program. She has a PhD from University of California, San Diego, and a BA from Johns Hopkins University.
 

Related Events

Opening reception:
Saturday, September 10, 2:30-4:30 p.m.
Nichols Gallery, Broad Center

Lecture by guest curator, Chương-Đài Võ
Wednesday, September 7 at 11 a.m.
Room 210, Broad Hall

Artist Lecture: Site and the Imaginary
Saturday, September 10 at 1:30 p.m.
Broad Center Performance Space, Broad Center

Patty Chang and David Kelley join us to discuss their collaborative video work Route 3, which is currently on view at the ���������� Art Galleries in the Far From Indochine exhibition, and a selection of other projects. While the pair work across a wide range of mediums and disciplines, from sculpture, drawing and photography to film, performance and new media, at the core of their collaboration is the intersection of site and the imaginary.

Route 3 is their recent video about a newly completed highway in rural Laos. Connecting China to Thailand through the former Golden Triangle, the new highway has accelerated Chinese development of Lao agricultural and gambling industries, and the migration of rural Lao minority populations to the growing roadside towns. The video considers the enigmatic changes in the visual landscape through performance and sculpture.

Panel Discussion: Modernism: Western Fantasies of the Orient
Wednesday, October 5 at 11 a.m.
Broad Center Performance Space, Broad Center

Panelists: John Tain, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Collections, Getty Research Institute; Wendy Cheng, Assistant Professor, American Studies, Scripps College; Viet Le, Artist and Professor, California College of the Arts; and Dewey Ambrosino, Artist and Professor, CalArts and Art Center College of Art and Design.

Generous funding for this event is provided by the ���������� Campus Life Committee.
 

Image Caption

Installation view of Far from Indochine at ���������� Art Galleries, September 10–December 9, 2016. Photo courtesy of Ruben Diaz.