Conversation with KV Duong and Hoa Dung Clerget
Message from migrant cultural workers
By Duong Thuy Nguyen
This is a winning entry from the fourth Art & Market ‘Fresh Take’ writing contest. For the full list of winners and prizes, click here.
The creative alliance between migrant cultural workers/artists KV Duong and Hoa Dung Clerget was sparked by a chance encounter on Instagram during London's Covid-19 lockdown in 2021. Despite their shared Vietnamese heritage, both had grown up outside Vietnam. While Duong focused on painting and performance and Clerget preferred installation and sculpture, they were brought together by a single concept: home.
Hoa Dung Clerget and KV Duong, ‘No Place Like Home Part I’, 2022. Photo by Joseph Beeching. Image courtesy of the artists.
Their pursuit of a common interest resulted in the inaugural ‘No Place Like Home Part I’ exhibition in London’s Canning Town Gallery in 2022, this marked their first collaboration as artists and co-curators. Building upon the success of their initial collaboration, Duong and Clerget now present their second instalment of the ‘No Place Like Home’ series. Hosted at the Museum of the Home in London, the exhibition began in April and concluded on 11 July 2023. With an unwavering commitment to delving into the multifaceted concept of home, the artists-/curators aimed to explore its diverse meanings, ranging from the deeply personal to the intricately political while focusing on the Vietnamese diaspora community residing in London.
“With an unwavering commitment to delving into the multifaceted concept of home, the artists-/curators aimed to explore its diverse meanings, ranging from the deeply personal to the intricately political while focusing on the Vietnamese diaspora community residing in London.”
Despite their distinct backgrounds—having grown up in Canada and France, respectively—and the variations in their adopted homes and periods of immigration from Vietnam, the collaboration between Duong and Clerget has created a vital platform for artists like Cuong Minh Ba Pham, Duong Thuy Nguyen, AP Nguyen, Minh Lan Tran, Koa Pham and Caro Gervay to delve into the intricate complexities of home and identity within the Vietnamese community.
As I speak to Duong and Clerget, they delve into their creative process, the challenges they have faced, and the importance of community in their work.
Could you begin by introducing the ‘No Place Like Home’ project and tell us more about its origins and the meaning of the titles in your work?
Duong & Clerget: We wanted ‘No Place Like Home’ to be more than just a series of exhibitions. We wanted to create a platform that encourages discussions and exchanges for a diverse audience around themes of home and belonging. We saw it as important to engage with a diverse mix of people, like the Vietnamese diaspora, families local to the area who might be unfamiliar with diasporic communities, London's immigrant communities, and contemporary art enthusiasts.
The initial idea germinated in the 2021 lockdown, when we connected over Instagram, bonding over our shared experience as diaspora Vietnamese living in London. These conversations shaped what would become our first ‘No Place Like Home Part I’ exhibition, which took place in Canning Gallery in May 2022.
KV Duong & Hoa Dung Clerget, panel discussion at ‘No Place Like Home Part I’, 2022. Photo by Joseph Beeching. Image courtesy of the artists.
Our goal was to bring people together under the theme of "Home." It's a highly personal concept that can mean different things to different people, depending on their backgrounds, upbringings, nationalities and identities.
We wanted an exhibition series to look at “home” beyond it being a physical dwelling and – to view it as a frame of mind, or a mental construct. This notion feels particularly true for diaspora communities, who are often torn between the physical location where they grew up in, and the cultural homes of their families which might be elsewhere. The title ‘No Place Like Home’ reflects these varied interpretations of "Home", acknowledging its inability to be strictly defined while recognising that different generational backgrounds perceive it differently.
You mention that diaspora communities are often torn between the physical location that they grew up in and the cultural homes of their families. How does your project tackle this issue?
Clerget: The loss of home. There is indeed a physical and real loss of the house (space) when one is displaced. But what we wanted to show by relying on Salman Rushdie's essay “Imaginary Homelands” (1991) is that there is not really a loss of house since it is always present in the memory, but also that this image makes it possible to strengthen the notion of home, the immigrants recreate it in their host country. We make this notion of “Home” an abstraction because we cannot really define it.
KV Duong, various works at ‘No Place Like Home Part II’, 2023. Photo by Joseph Beeching. Image courtesy of the artist.
Duong: The exhibition acknowledges the complex emotional journey of diaspora communities who feel torn between the physical place where they grew up and the cultural heritage of their families. It explores the notion that although there is a physical loss of home when one is displaced, the concept of home remains present in memory and can be recreated in the host country.
The exhibition also highlights that for diaspora communities, their cultural identity extends beyond geographical boundaries, challenging the idea of confinement to a specific place. It acknowledges that the experiences of diaspora members living outside of Vietnam are just as important and valid as those living within the country, despite being different.
What has the project taught you in terms of new strategies for collaboration and access to information? What new initiatives can you imagine for the future in terms of preserving cultural heritage?
Clerget: Through this project, we have discovered the value of fostering collaboration and providing access to information for diverse voices. This has led to sub-projects and collaborations, such as Minh Lan Tran's partnership with choreographer Lena Hetzel and music by composer Vincent Yuen Ruiz to create the performance piece ‘Heat Generation (Prayer)’. This collaboration involved integrating different perspectives on violence and responses to each other, resulting in a collective and dynamic choreography. The performance explores violence as a transformative process, encompassing infliction, internalisation, and the merging of temporalities. These experiences have taught us the importance of embracing collaboration and allowing voices to freely express themselves.
‘No Place Like Home Part II’, 2023, exhibition view. Photo by Joseph Beeching. Image courtesy of the artists.
Duong: In terms of preserving cultural heritage, documentation plays a crucial role. As part of the project's legacy, we have produced a zine, recordings of panel discussions and curators' tours, a museum curation pamphlet, and several articles written by both ourselves and others about the exhibition. Looking ahead, we envision further initiatives to continue documenting and safeguarding cultural heritage, such as digitising archives, conducting oral history interviews, and exploring innovative platforms for dissemination and engagement.
Are you researching any other histories or geographies that are related to “home” at the moment?
We are thinking about the concept of Home beyond the physical space of our bodies and Earth. At the moment, we are researching rituals of mourning for the deceased in Vietnamese and Southeast Asia cultures - concepts of death, the afterlife, and reincarnation.
Read KV Duong’s My Own Words essay on the exhibition here.
Read Duong Thuy Nguyen’s Fresh Faces feature here.
The work of both practitioners were featured in the recent CHECK-IN 2023 publication.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of A&M or the prize sponsors.
About the Writer
Duong Thuy Nguyen (b. 1991) is a Vietnamese multidisciplinary artist, curator, and writer based in London, who explores the intricate connections between nature and urban environments. Her artistic practice delves into the profound impact of rapid urbanisation on the vanishing rural landscapes of northern Vietnam. Nguyen holds a Master of Fine Art (Distinction) from Central Saint Martins. Her graduating project was shortlisted for the Mullenlowe Nova Award, given an honorary mention for the Cass Art Prize, and won the Maison/o This Earth Award in 2023.
