Maier hosts documentary screening featuring artist in "Contemporary Vietnamerican Art" exhibition

Each artist represented in Contemporary Vietnamerican Art, the exhibition currently showing at the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College, has ties to the Vietnam War. On Monday, the Maier will show a documentary about art and protest to shed more light on the messages in the exhibition.

The Maier will screen “Protest,” a segment in the PBS Series Art in the 21st Century, at 1 p.m. September 30. This segment focuses on the way artists use their art to engage in discussion about war, injustice, and current events. An-My Lê, a photographer represented in the Maier’s current exhibition, is one artist featured in this segment.

An-My Lê is the most well established of the five artists featured in the exhibition. Her interest lies primarily in photographing war without focusing on the combat experience. She attempts to capture the day-to-day events outside of battle. Contemporary Vietnamerican Art includes several of her early photographs that were taken at Vietnam War reenactments in Virginia.

Lê’s portion of the Art in the 21st Century Protest episode features her works done after the photographs in the Maier were created, so the viewers will be able to see what she has done more recently.

The documentary stands out because rather than using narrators, most of the speaking is done by the featured artists themselves.

Nancy Sparrow, who has pieces in the College's art collection, also has a part in the segment.

Exhibition highlights “Vietnamerican” art

Without ever showing a scene of combat, the art in Randolph College’s 102nd Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art tells the story of the Vietnam War and its legacy.

Binh Danh devised a way to print photos onto leaves. Several
pieces are in Contemporary Vietnamerican Art at the Maier.

The exhibition, titled Contemporary Vietnamerican Art, features the works of five artists who were born in Vietnam but now live and work in the United States. “All of the artists were affected by the Vietnam War, but they’re not singularly defined by it,” said Martha Johnson, director of the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College.

Each work has some connection to the artists’ Vietnamese heritage and childhood. Most also hearken to the war that ravaged the country 40 years ago, forcing some of the artists’ families to flee their home country.

The works include photographs displayed on leaves using a technique photographer Binh Danh developed, as well as more traditional photographs showing modern schoolchildren in Vietnam by Pipo Nguyen-duy.

Several black and white photographs by An-My Lê  capture scenes from Vietname War reenactments held in Central Virginia. Lien Truong’s surrealist paintings portray bomb craters that are transforming into pools from which new life springs.

Thomas Thuấn Ðặng Vũ’s abstract works are full of symbols—gas masks, loudspeakers that were used to spread communist propaganda, toys from his childhood, fresh fruit he once presented on an altar to his ancestors. “More than any of the other artists, he talks about his work as really digging through the images and feelings of his childhood as a cathartic process,” Johnson said.

The idea for this show grew from the 2012 exhibition, Bridges Not Walls, which focused on the art of several artists who have immigrated to America from several other countries. This year, Johnson wanted to narrow the focus to artists from one country. Because Randolph has more international students from Vietnam than from any other foreign country, it became the subject. Johnson discovered the term “Vietnamerica” in the title of a book a Vietnamese author wrote about his family.

The exhibition will open Thursday, Sept. 5, with a panel discussion at 6 p.m. The panel discussion will include two students from Vietnam, a student whose research has focused on Vietnam, and a local participant in Vietnam War reenactments. The exhibition will be on view until December 9.

“I hope people will enjoy the imagery at face value: we have work that is humorous as well as work that is contemplative,” Johnson said. “I also hope they can consider things about identity, consider assumptions about identity and the concept of bridging our cultural differences.”

American art by international artists featured in new Maier exhibition

The new exhibition at The Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College tells the story of cultures that have come together in America to make unique art.

Opening Reception

Bridges Not Walls opens Friday, Aug. 31, 3:30 p.m., with a gallery talk.

See the poster for details.

Bridges Not Walls: The 101st Exhibition of Contemporary Art includes the works of six artists from other countries who have made their home in the United States. It follows the theme of the College’s quality enhancement plan, also titled “Bridges Not Walls,” which seeks to build students’ intercultural competency.

“It seemed to offer a lot of opportunity for us as a theme,” said Martha Johnson, director of the Maier. “There is an overabundance of great examples of people expressing themselves creatively, bringing with them all these different heritages.”

The new exhibition opens on Friday, August 31, at 3:30 p.m. when artist Sook Jin Jo will give a gallery talk, followed by a reception. Originally from Korea, her work follows themes of finding common ground in humanity. Her work in Bridges Not Walls is an installation art piece featuring empty frames hanging from the ceiling, as well as a video of her performance art Crossroads.

Most of the other artists represented in the exhibition will present gallery talks and participate in a panel discussion during the Heather Clark Berlind Symposium, Sept. 15–16.

The other artists include:

Edgar Endress
Born in Chilé, much of Endress’ art tells the story of people moving from one country to another, Johnson said. In Bridges Not Walls, he presents The Shrine of the American Dream, which features images from patent applications for inventions that never became successful, combined with wood from demolished homes.

Muriel Hasbun
Hasbun grew up in El Salvador during a civil war. Her father, a dentist, was often called upon to use dental X-rays to identify casualties during the war. Her work Ex Post Facto turns these X-rays into art. “These images had a very haunting kind of role, but they also are very beautiful abstractions,” Johnson said. “She sees them as inner landscapes of individuals who now are identified and remembered by these X-rays.”

Assaf Evron
Primarily a photographer, Evron will display pieces from a series of photographs that portray a phenomenon in his home country of Israel. Because of the price of scrap metal, many people fill shopping carts with scrap that they can sell. His photographs in this series portray these shopping carts and their shadows with background removed, making them appear as floating sculptures.

Kukuli Verlarde
Verlarde is from Peru and now lives in Philadelphia. Her art works include ceramic sculpture inspired by pre-Columbian imagery and life-size self-portrait paintings. “She explores different identities that are stereotypical identities of Peruvian women,” Johnson said. The Maier exhibition will include four of Verlarde’s self-portraits.

Jiha Moon
Compared to the other artists represented in Bridges Not Walls, Moon’s work involves more visual blending between American culture and her native culture. “She combines Korean imagery with American imagery and puts them together in a very playful way,” Johnson said. Moon now lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Johnson said the exhibition was originally inspired by the College’s 2010 exhibition, which included works from Korean artist Sang-Ah Choi. Randolph acquired Choi’s Welcome to America, a mixed-media piece that depicts immigrants being welcomed by Mickey and Minnie Mouse and surrounded by American cultural symbols. “A lot of her work is about her coming here and about her impressions of what life is like here,” Johnson said.

“It’s a very American thing,” she added. “Ultimately, we’re a country of immigrants. It’s an old story, but one I think we sometimes tend to forget.”