Thao Nguyen Phan’s Poignant Works Reflect on Vietnam’s Past and Present

Upon entering Thao Nguyen Phan’s current solo exhibition at Tate St. Ives—the largest presentation of her work in the U.K. to date—one immediately encounters two white sculptures pinned to the walls of a darkly lit gallery. Depicting a sunflower and a bird, the petals of the flower are illuminated from behind, and the bird is flecked with twinkling lights. Both pieces, respectively titled The Flower and The Rise (both 2017), were once street decorations that were used to light up the streets of Ho Chi Minh City during Lunar New Year celebrations and Communist Party congresses.

Recalling both traditional Vietnamese symbols and Communist state propaganda, the images of the flower and bird make a fitting entry point into Phan’s artistic universe. As a pair, they exemplify Phan’s ability to use simple, beguiling images to tell multilayered stories about Vietnam’s past and present. Continuing into the next two galleries, one witnesses the artist’s stories unfold through watercolor paintings, sculptural installations, and video pieces—or, as they’re titled, “moving images.” These works are moving both literally and figuratively, often describing national traumas and tragedies that have been forgotten due to what Phan calls her country’s “historical amnesia.”

One of these national traumas is the 1945–46 famine in Vietnam, when, under Japanese occupation, farmers were forced to uproot their rice and plant inedible crops such as jute. An estimated two million people died. The three-channel, black-and-white video Mute Grain (2019) gives voice to oral accounts of the famine by its survivors. It also chronicles the fictional tale of Ba and Tám, a brother and sister named after the lowest-yield months for food harvest in Vietnam (March and August). The two are separated by Tám’s sudden death, but carry on searching for each other across this life and the next.

The siblings Ba and Tám reappear in “The Dream of March and August”(2020), a series of ethereal watercolor paintings on silk which hang in pairs, suspended from the ceiling. Each pair depicts Ba and Tám performing parallel activities in a magical, dreamlike realm. They climb trees, ride motorcycles, and skip rope. But their childish joy is undercut by sadness: In nearly every painting, they are apart and often alone. In another work, No Jute Cloth for the Bones (2019–present), clusters of jute stalks descend from the ceiling like a rainshower. The stalks create a rustling sound as they move and brush against one another, joining the polyphonic sounds made by Phan’s video works.

Phan’s interest in rural existence stems from the annual field trips she would take to the countryside as a schoolgirl. During these trips—part of Vietnam’s socialist tradition of education—children were told to sketch and paint life outside the city. These excursions have continued to be a source of inspiration for the artist.

Phan, now 34, was born and raised in Ho Chi Minh City. She studied painting at university in Vietnam and Singapore and only began experimenting with other art forms while at the Art Institute of Chicago, while pursuing an MFA. She credits the works of Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul and American artists Bruce Nauman and Joan Jonas with introducing her to new ways of artmaking. In 2016, Jonas—an early pioneer of video and performance art—became Phan’s artistic mentor, encouraging her to continue developing her essayistic style of constructing visual narratives.