Aranya Art Center is pleased to present Vietnamese filmmaker and artist Nguyễn Trinh Thi’s first solo exhibition in China, which features two video works, Letters From Panduranga (2015) and How to Improve the World (2020-2021), the first and the latest of a trilogy on indigenous cultures.
Traversing boundaries between film, documentary, video art, installation, and performance, Nguyễn Trinh Thi’s practice currently explores the potential of sound and listening, and the multiple relations between the image, sound, and space with ongoing interests in history, memory, ecology, representation, and the unknown. She uses montage to compose her work, drawing on different image media, from her own audio and visual recordings to found footage and still images from postcards, photography, newsreels, Hollywood films and ethnographic footage.
The second work in the trilogy, Fifth Cinema (2018) will be presented at a specially organized screening and conversation in presence of the artist.
This exhibition is organized by Damien Zhang, director of Aranya Art Center and curatorial assistant Gao Liangjiao. The exhibition will be on view from October 29, 2023, through February 25, 2024.
Nguyễn Trinh Thi
Based in Hanoi, Nguyễn Trinh Thi is a filmmaker and artist. Recent exhibitions include installations at documenta 15, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, the 21st Biennale of Sydney, and the 13th Lyon Contemporary Art Biennale. In 2009, Nguyễn founded Hanoi DOCLAB, an independent center for documentary film and moving image in Hanoi.
