Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba (born 1968), is a Japanese-Vietnamese visual artist. He works in drawing, and video art. He grew up in Japan and currently lives in
Ho Chi Minh City
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, population_demonym = Saigonese
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, blank_info = 2019
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, Vietnam, and happens to also be of a Japanese and Vietnamese ethnicity.
Biography
Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba was born in 1968 in
Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...
to a Japanese mother and a Vietnamese father.
In 1968, the year he was born was the same year of the
Tet Offensive
The Tet Offensive was a major escalation and one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War. It was launched on January 30, 1968 by forces of the Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) against the forces o ...
staged by the
Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops. He spent his childhood in Japan.
He earned B.F.A. degree (1992) from the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and an M.F.A. degree (1994) from the
Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).
He has had solo exhibitions at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rome,
Kunsthalle Wien, Austria, Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art /
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is an art museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., focusing on Asian art. The Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art together form the National Museum of Asian Art in the United States. Th ...
and a retrospective of his work was shown at the Manchester Art Gallery in England. His work has been included in numerous biennials, including the
Shanghai Biennale
The Shanghai Biennale is one of the highest-profile contemporary art events in Shanghai and the most established art biennale in China. It was initially held in the Shanghai Art Museum. From 2012 on, it has been hosted in Power Station of Art, the ...
, the
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
, the
Istanbul Biennial, and the
São Paulo Biennale.
Nguyen-Hatsushiba's films explore
Vietnamese history and national identity, and have referenced issues such as the displacement of Vietnamese "
boat people" after the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
. Alienation is Hatsushiba's principal theme. ''Happy New Year'' features a processional dragon, coiling around the reef like a sea-serpent while capsules of coloured dye explode to form underwater fireworks. The installation ''Garden of Globes'' is representative of a lunar landscape of silver orbs floats beneath a suspended canopy of rickshaws, old engine parts and other flotsam of Vietnamese urban life. Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s video work, ''Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex—For the Courageous, the Curious, and the Cowards'', was filmed in 2001 on the southeast coast of Vietnam. This was the artist’s first video work and offers captivating images of local fishermen pulling cyclos (rickshaws) underwater toward an area where the artist stretched about thirty mosquito nets across the sea bed. The cyclos, submerged in deep water, represent the weight of tradition and reference Vietnam’s historical past in the context of the country’s struggle with the processes of modernization. ''Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam'' also marked the beginning of Nguygen-Hatsushiba’s ongoing project ''Breathing is Free 12,756.3''. The project is the culmination of a body of work on the global refugee crisis. As Nguyen-Hatsushiba travels around the globe he will run through the cities and environments, working towards covering a distance equivalent to the earth’s diameter (12,756.3 kilometers). To date Nguyen-Hatsushiba ran in Chicago, Taipei, Manchester, Singapore, Luang Prabang, Taichung, Karlsruhe, Ho Chi Minh City, Oami, Lucerne, and Geneva. A series of virtual earth drawings, illustrating the movement of populations around the world, serves as an exhibition counterpart along with installation pieces. Arizona State University Art Museum hosted to US premier of the exhibition. It has since travelled to Rymer Gallery, School of Art Institute of Chicago. ''Breathing is Free 12,756.3'' is co-organized by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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References
External links
Lehmann Maupin GalleryGuggenheim Museum CollectionCentre Pompidou
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Jun
Japanese contemporary artists
Japanese painters
Vietnamese painters
1968 births
Living people
Artists of Vietnamese descent
Japanese people of Vietnamese descent
Vietnamese people of Japanese descent
School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni