Curator at Berlin Biennale
By Dan N. Tran

Ana Teixeira Pinto, Noam Segal, Kader Attia, Đỗ Tường Linh, Rasha Salti and Marie Helene Pereira. Image courtesy of Berlin Biennale (photo by Silke Briel).

The 12th Berlin Biennale opened on 11 June 2022, and runs till 18 September 2022. It is curated by a team: Marie Helene Pereira, Rasha Salti, Noam Segal, Ana Teixeira Pinto (till June 2022) and Đỗ Tường Linh, led by Kader Attia. In this conversation, I speak with Đỗ Tường Linh about representing Vietnam and the wider Southeast Asian region in the event, as well as the unprecedented number of participating artists from this part of the world and what they have to express.

You are one of the very few Southeast Asian or even Asian curators to be in the artistic team of the Berlin Biennale throughout its history. Can you share with us the journey that has brought you to this role?

My participation in this year’s curatorial team stems from a long-standing relationship with the artistic director Kader Attia. We met at a conference, ‘Artists, Museums and Future Collections’, organised by the Goethe Institute in Kuala Lumpur in 2017. Over the course of the conference, we developed mutual interests in each other’s practice. Decolonisation is a persistent theme in his work, but I did not expect an Algerian Frenchman to be so keen to know more about Southeast Asia and Vietnam. I then learnt from him the symbolic significance of Vietnam, especially of the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ, in not just the Algerian War but revolutionary movements in Africa.

Our conversation then led to him telling me about the art space La Colonie that he founded in Paris in 2016. It was a gathering place for artists, intellectuals, and activists, all of whom were people of colour. I was very inspired by this and had an opportunity to be a part of it in the African Art Book Fair, where I worked with another La Colonie team member, Pascale Obolo. There, I introduced to the fair patrons publications from Vietnam such as AJAR Press and Saigon Artbook. When we laid out all the publications on a table, it became apparent our shared concerns about politics, the body, and identities, such as those of feminists and queers. From then on, Kader expressed hope to run a programme at La Colonie focusing on Vietnam, but unfortunately the place closed down amid the pandemic.

I officially received the invitation to join the artistic team last July. There are four other members in the team, who all have worked or collaborated with Kader in some capacity or another. Marie Helene Pereira has been to Vietnam in a Global South programme by Sàn Art. Noam Segal is an Israeli based in New York City and knows my curator friend Bill Nguyễn. Rasha Salti is the most senior among us and very knowledgeable about the Middle East; she used to be based in Lebanon and Paris. The last one is Ana Teixeira Pinot, who was also part of the artistic team until June 2022. Our diverse backgrounds are crucial, for decolonisation must be a collective, discursive effort.

“Our diverse backgrounds are crucial, for decolonisation must be a collective, discursive effort.”

Tammy Nguyen, series of paintings, 2022, watercolour, vinyl paint, pastel, metal leaf on paper stretched on foam board mounted on wooden frame. Image courtesy of Berlin Biennale (photo by dotgain.info).

Artists of Vietnamese descent participating in all previous iterations of the biennale can be counted on one hand. Meanwhile, this year alone features eight out of 70 artists and artist groups. How did your team arrive at this decision?

The more I travel, the more I see traces of Vietnam in the contemporary world. For instance, in the Tate Modern’s conference “Axis of Solidarity” in 2019, I was given the opportunity to present a paper on the solidarity between Vietnam and Cuba alongside leading academics. In documenta 14 dated five years back, Bangladeshi artist Naeem Mohaiemen presented a work that examines the failure of the Non-Aligned Movement’s attempts to counter the Cold War’s politics of bipolarity; and in the film, Vietnamese politician Nguyễn Thị Bình makes several appearances.

Ultimately, the decision to select the artists was in Kader’s hands. In an interview, he explained the spotlight on Vietnamese artists. On a personal level, he grew up in a neighbourhood in France with a vibrant Vietnamese community. More importantly, the Vietnamese make up the largest Asian community in Germany. Yet, they still seem almost invisible, especially in the contemporary art world. We both know that there have only been a handful of Vietnamese names who have made it into the art world circle, such as Danh Võ, whose Vietnamese-Danish identity has been toyed with in his work and subjected to academic scrutiny, and Đỉnh Q. Lê.

Mai Nguyễn-Long, ‘Specimen (Permate)’, 2022, used glass household jars, found objects, organic matter. Image courtesy of Berlin Biennale (photo by dotgain.info).

I believe that the eight works by Vietnamese artists this year are diverse enough to portray the complexities of the Vietnamese experiences. Take for instance Mai-Long Nguyễn’s work on the legacy of Agent Orange. While a well-known issue that concerns not only the environment but also generations of people in Vietnam, this topic has rarely been brought up in art, save the propagandic paintings by domestic artists. That makes Mai-Long one of the very few to handle the subject with great sensibilities and candour. Another example is Đào Châu Hải's sculpture that displays superb craftsmanship and conceptual maturity.

Kader from time to time reiterates the two ideas that permeate his own practice: Repair and the Field of Emotion. It is clear that the selected works by Vietnamese artists display great personal depths, justifying their rightful place in the exhibition. Nowadays the contemporary art world can be so tied up with capitalism that artists often have to pursue certain “in-demand” subject matters to make a name in the scene. I believe that it is precisely the affecting personal dimension of the artistic creations that they can move viewers, because the works are born out of real-life stories and sincere emotions.

Đào Châu Hải, ‘Ballad of the East Sea (detail)’, 2022, CNC cut steel plates. Image courtesy of Berlin Biennale (photo by dotgain.info).

“It is clear that the selected works by Vietnamese artists display great personal depths, justifying their rightful place in the exhibition. Nowadays the contemporary art world can be so tied up with capitalism that artists often have to pursue certain “in-demand” subject matters to make a name in the scene. I believe that it is precisely the affecting personal dimension of the artistic creations that they can move viewers, because the works are born out of real-life stories and sincere emotions.”

To spotlight the Vietnamese experiences and certain artistic practices that can be loosely tagged with a handful of national labels is at the same time to deliberately leave out decolonial efforts by artists from many other former colonies, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, or the Philippines, to name a few countries in Southeast Asia alone. Do you agree with this claim?

In the initial stages of the curatorial process, my proposals to Kader were not limited to Vietnam. He was even quite keen to feature artists in China making works about the Uyghurs community. Although I did check with my contacts in China, the situation was not ideal because I could not be physically present to form my own judgement.

Once I arrived in Berlin last December, I did visit some artist studios here and suggested to Kader suitable candidates from different Asian countries. At the same time, we have to be cognisant that this year is fresh out of the pandemic, therefore several international art events coincide, such as the Venice Biennale, Lyon Biennale, Manifesta, and most importantly documenta, led by the Indonesian collective ruangrupa. So for sure Southeast Asia is represented there.

Given that our resources are not unlimited, I believe it is therefore more fitting to feature lesser known artists who would otherwise be invisible. An example is the performance art piece “Headstand” by Ngô Thành Bắc, the archive materials of which are on display at the Stasi Headquarters, Campus for Democracy. His practice is known by very few people in Vietnam, although his concepts and viewpoints are undeniably strong and persuasive. The team even intended to invite him to perform at monuments around Berlin, but the pandemic made it hard to realise the plan. It would have been really interesting, especially because the division between West Germany and East Germany is still very much present in the German capital.

Ngô Thành Bắc, ‘Trồng Cây Chuối – Headstand’, 2007/22, photographs of performance. Image courtesy of Berlin Biennale (photo by Laura Fiorio).

Attia’s curatorial direction focuses on exposing the wounds caused by colonial atrocities that have been sidelined by whitewashed narratives. Meanwhile, Wendy Brown warns against the focus on the state of woundedness because such an outlook validates the authority of the oppressive mechanisms and is unguided in its emancipatory orientation. While to offer a utopic prospect of postcoloniality is beyond the scope set out by the biennale, what do you think about the capacity of art to not just expose the wounds of colonialism but also to aspire towards a more just postcolonial order?

Just like how politicians can make empty promises, art, when assigned with such a noble task, could simply lull people into false confidence. Of course artists do often seek to produce works that do not just revolve around their pains and wounded identities. But it is not always easy. For instance, it is often the case for Vietnamese-American artists that their works are hardly recognised if they are not about wars. Perhaps the digital realm could offer a possibility for such a utopian vision, where artists would not need to make any identity claims to nationality, culture, race, or sex.

Brown is a political theorist. Meanwhile, regardless of its political dimension, art is still about the poetics, the personal, the emotions. Kader himself speaks a lot about politics, but at the same time he stresses the Field of Emotion, about the affect of art as something that resonates.

The 12th Berlin Biennale is on show from 11 June to 18 September 2022. Click here for more information.

The interview has been edited.

About the Writer

A computer programmer by day and a writer by night, Dan N. Tran takes a keen interest in the visual cultures circulating in the region. His writings have appeared on SGIFF, Matca, SINdie, among others.