NO PLACE LIKE HOME
(A VIETNAMESE EXHIBITION) part ii

19 April to 11 July, 2023

Launch: 19 April, 6-9pm (Wed)
Tea Conversations: 13 May, 1-4pm (Sat)
Panel Discussion: 6 June, 6-8pm (Tue)
Performances: 24 June, 2-4pm (Sat)
Closing: 11 July, 6-8pm (Tue)

Artist Team:
KV Duong
Hoa Dung Clerget
Duong Thuy Nguyen
Cường Minh Bá Phạm
Carô Gervay
Minh Lan Tran
AP Nguyen
Koa Pham

Museum of The Home
136 Kingsland Rd, London E2 8EA
Free to visit 10am-5pm Tuesday to Sunday

Supported by:
Jerwood Arts New Work Fund
Arts Council of England National Lottery Project Grant

For further information, please contact:
KV Duong, kvduongart@gmail.com
Hoa Dung Clerget, hdclerget@lagalerielibre.co.uk

Publications:
A&M: My Own Words: No Place Like Home
The Conversation: What an exhibition by artists of the Vietnamese diaspora says about home and belonging
UAL: No Place Like Home exhibition: Unearthing untold stories of migration
FAD Magazine: No Place Like Home Exhibition Review

EXHIBITION OVERVIEW

Museum of The Home, located in the heart of the Vietnamese community on Kingsland Road, is proud to commission a new contemporary art exhibition titled No Place Like Home (A Vietnamese Exhibition) Part II. Co-curated and led by KV Duong and Hoa Dung Clerget, this collaborative exhibition explores home through the lens of Vietnamese diaspora artists. Part II is a continuation of the exploration that began in 2022 at the Canning Gallery.

Immigrant family meals are important moments of connection and storytelling. Traditional foods are deeply intertwined with notions of memory, identity, and belonging, both in the places where diasporic parents have settled and on a transnational scale as a reminder of Vietnam.

This main room showcases object-based pieces on low-rise tables and invites visitors to sit on straw mats to engage with the works. The tables’ soft curved shape disrupts the traditional hard-edged administrative and patriarchal tables, allowing transmission of knowledge and experiences for voices from marginalised second-generation immigrants.

The striking cityscape installed at the entrance is constructed from Vietnamese plastic stools to highlight the effect of the urban structure on the emotions of migrant populations . The adjacent shrine, typically placed at the front of a business or home, welcomes the visitors into the exhibition space.

The exhibited artists have a diverse range of Vietnamese diasporic backgrounds, including 1.5 and second generations, those with refugee parents, and others who grew up in Vietnam. Additionally, the group's cultural backgrounds include Chinese, French, Canadian, Algerian, and British.

We ask our audience, which objects create a feeling of home for you?

The exhibition features a range of events including workshops, a panel discussion, performances, and food sharing.

CURATORS’ TOUR

PANEL DISCUSSION

Panel Discussion - featuring panellists:
Annabelle Wilkins, Cường Minh Bá Phạm, Dora Lam, Owen Hewitson, and moderated by KV Duong.

💬 What does Home mean for the Vietnamese diasporic community in the UK?
💬 How are cultural conflicts negotiated within the diasporic community?
💬 What objects create a feeling of home for us?

PUBLIC EVENTS

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

KV Duong (b.1980 Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam) is a London-based artist who examines the complexities of the Vietnamese queer identity through painting, performance, sculpture, and installation. Duong grew up in Canada to Vietnamese Chinese parents displaced by the Vietnam War. Duong is a self-taught artist with a Masters in Structural Engineering. He presented his first institutional solo exhibition at the Migration Museum in 2022.

Hoa Dung Clerget (b.1985, France) lives and works in the UK. Clerget holds a Master in Painting from Royal College of Art. Clerget’s practice is centred on the artisanal production of objects that narrate the themes of the domestic and displacement. Her works affirm their materiality through gestures borrowed from everyday life, the gestures of the women in her family and community.

Duong Thuy Nguyen (b.1991 Hanoi, Vietnam) is a London-based artist and writer. She is currently studying under a scholarship in Master of Fine Art and works as a Changemaker at Central Saint Martins. Exploring the intersections between contemporary art and social responsibility, Duong works with practice-based research focuses on reflecting social cohesion and community identity. She is co-founder of the Southeast Asian artist collective An.OtherAsian.

Cường Minh Bá Phạm (b.1988 London, UK) works in/between/nearby sound, community, and archives. He is interested in learning (and at times unlearning) our understanding of history, community, movement, family, sound, language, and memory and how they inform or challenge power, knowledge and/or subjectivity. Phạm holds a Master’s in Southeast Asia studies at SOAS. He is the co-founder of An Viet Archives Steering Committee.

Carô Gervay (b.1986 Paris, France) explores photography as a performative process that generates new spaces of reflection and potential for critical action. Through ‘drawing with light’ and 'appearing acts', she creates experiences where imagination and memory are in play. Gervay is interested in collectively expressing and responding to the needs and aspirations of diaspora communities, whilst challenging the norms of how we create with photography. She is co-director of the Gate Darkroom.

Minh Lan Tran (b.1997, Hong Kong) lives and works in London. She is currently completing an MA in Painting at The Royal College of Art. Tran's practice builds on her own writing and identity-based research in calligraphy. Drawing on textual elements, Tran creates works on canvas that blend writing and paint in an iterative process of reflection and integration. Skin-like and multi-layered, Tran’s compositions evolve, respond, and change through her own bodily actions.

AP Nguyen (b.1999 Hanoi, Vietnam) is a multidisciplinary artist working in the mediums of ceramic, sculpture, and video. Her practice is as driven by material and process as it is by the interrogation of images, aesthetics, and the semiotics of tourism. Interpreting the psychology of travel and movement in a post-war context, she explores the potential for world-building and myth-making in order to question clichés and learnt narratives. She currently lives and works in London.

Koa Pham (b.1993 Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam) works with different mediums including drawing, sculpture, and design. His work investigates the relationship between objects, humans, and space, with an emphasis on how objects affect humans and influence their decision-making. Pham holds a BA and MA in Industrial Design from Central Saint Martins.

ABOUT THE MUSEUM OF THE HOME

Museum of the Home’s purpose is to reveal and rethink the ways we live, in order to live better together. Through our collections, exhibitions, events, performances, and debates, we reveal diverse, thought-provoking and personal stories of home from the last 400 years to the present and looking into the homes of the future. Explore our stories of home and share your own.

NO PLACE LIKE HOME
(A VIETNAMESE EXHIBITION) part i

(Canning Gallery, 2022)