Queensland Art Gallery - Queensland Government

Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba
Breathing is free
Central to Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s work is the socioeconomic change
brought to postwar Vietnam by the rising tide of globalisation. In
considering this issue, however, the artist takes a broad view; he does
not identify himself with one single country making up his heritage —
Japan (his mother’s country, and where he was born), the United States
(where he was raised), or Vietnam (his father’s country and where he
has lived since 1997). Rather, he moves fluidly between them, drawing
on all three cultures. Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s memorials to the plights of
his compatriots — the ‘boat people’ who left Vietnam to seek freedom,
only to become refugees — are attempts at ensuring the problems of
refugees worldwide are in the forefront of peoples’ minds.
Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s practice has taken multiple forms since
1994, with his drawings, sculptures, performances and installations
consistently referencing local motifs such as rice, mosquito nets,
dragons and cyclos. His ‘Memorial project’ video series, a suite of
four films shot between 2001 and 2003, is particularly noteworthy 1 —
Nguyen-Hatsushiba aligned imagery of figures floating underwater
with acts of mourning victims of war and environmental destruction.
This poetic approach, alerting audiences to social concerns, has
brought him wide acclaim internationally.
The video work The Ground, the Root, and the Air: The Passing of
the Bodhi Tree 2004–07 was realised in cooperation with 50 students
from the School of Fine Arts in Luang Prabang in Laos, an ancient
city experiencing the influence of global market forces. However, it
differs from Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s ‘Memorial project’ series in that
its social messages are treated more abstractly, contributing to its
beauty and lyricism.
Hatsushiba aims to run the shortest distance to the other side of the
earth (12 756.3 kilometres, the earth’s diameter), as a metaphor for
the refugee’s unfulfilled wish to escape to the polar opposite of their
circumstances. The bodies of his performers are subjected to tough
conditions, entering territory somewhat beyond their control. Air is a
metaphor for freedom in Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s work; breathing is free,
indeed. People struggle underwater, on the ground, or in the river, to
release themselves and to find freedom, and when they finally do, it
offers a vision of hope for the future.
Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba encourages a realist approach to his work:
‘My work might look political, but I am not here to take sides on
which perspective is correct’. 2 The magic of art does not lie in political
correctness or in the direct quotation of a real situation. It is far more
effective to engage viewers through beauty based on reality and
tangibility. In examining society’s realities, Nguyen-Hatsushiba says,
‘what I need to create at the end must present itself as magic’. 3
Shihoko Iida
Endnotes
1 Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the complex — For the courageous,
the curious, and the cowards 2001; Happy New Year: Memorial Project Vietnam II
2003; Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas: Battle of Easel Point — Memorial Project
Okinawa 2003; and Memorial Project Minamata: Neither either nor neither — A love
story 2002–03.
2 Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, interview by Fernando Galán, art.es, no.1, 2004, p.59.
3 Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, email to the author, 4 July 2008.
The film features the students sketching the spectacular landscape
along the Mekong River as they sweep along it on their wooden
motorboats. When the boats near a sacred Bodhi tree on the
riverbank, some of the students suddenly leap into the water and swim
towards it, as if led by the Buddhist chants on the soundtrack. This act
may be interpreted as the silent will of the Laotian people to maintain
the flow of Buddha’s spirit, even as multinational capital pours into
the country. It could also be read as an attempt to locate oneself in
the great cycle of life, recognising that each one of us is a part of it.
As the work approaches its serene yet dramatic climax, we gradually
see these tensions appear and disappear in the drift of eternal time
that the Mekong symbolises.
The work of Nguyen-Hatsushiba both recognises history and steps
into the future. He has worked with the people of Nha Trang in
Vietnam, and Okinawa and Minamata in Japan — who bear the
historical scars of war and pollution — inviting them to perform in his
underwater works. In his ongoing running project, Breathing is free:
12,756.3 for global refugee crisis, which he began in 2007, Nguyen-
Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba
Japan/United States/Vietnam b.1968
The Ground, the Root, and the Air: The Passing of the
Bodhi Tree (stills) 2004–07
High-definition digital video, single channel, colour,
sound, 14:30 minutes / Courtesy: The artist and Mizuma
Art Gallery, Tokyo / Images courtesy: The artist; The Quiet
in the Land, Laos; Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo; Lehmann
Maupin Gallery, New York / Photographs: Yukari Imai
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