My proposal to exhibit Bàn Lộn- Vagina Talks at Rối exhibition

Rối exhibition is part of the project “Preventing gender-based violence in Vietnamese university communities” which is conducted by Center for Education Promotion and Empowerment of Women (CEPEW) at Thai Nguyen University (TNU) from September 2020 to February 2021 with the financial support from the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI).

The exhibition is expected to take place from January 23 to February 05, 2021 at TNU.

We are looking for artists/artist groups to contribute artworks for display at the exhibition.

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I am Dinh Nhung (full name: Dinh Thi Nhung), founder Bàn Lộn -Vagina Talks. I am very enthusiastic when I read this information because of the following reasons:

- The topic is relevant: the main goal that I started Bàn Lộn -Vagina Talks is to challenge traditional norms and values that oppress individuals, esp young women to explore, learn, communicate about sexuality and open up their experiences and,

- Many remain silent about sexual violence because they hold values that prevent them to speak or be blamed for their victimization.

-My interest in using arts for not only a means to an end (to talk or raise awareness of gender-based violence, sexual violence, or desensitize the topics) but also to create an enabling environment for anyone to engage, to free themselves, and to express or learn how to express their thoughts and feelings without feeling exploited or exposed when they bring up their deepest thoughts or feelings/experiences. -My realization that we have to repeat the message in one way or other many times. Changing norms for the better lives of many people including ourselves and prevent gender-based violence is important because of the high prevalence of violence including violence against women and girls, intimate violence, or violence against people because of their sexuality or gender expression as well as taboos and silence and underreported cases (including sexual violence against boys and transexual men and women), etc. - I am holding a collection of artworks made by hundreds of people in Vietnam as well as other countries. I would like to introduce to the audience in Thai Nguyen about this collection.

These artworks had been displayed in Nha san collective (18-30. Nov, 2017) in Nap Hostel (March and April 2018, HCMC) in the exhibitions called "Lip xinh"

Like the word "Bàn Lộn" a playful playing suggestion to readers to think and have a humorous moment when they figure out the hidden meaning, besides the original meaning of inappropriate discussion, Lipxinh brings extra meaning when one heard others saying it out loud, they could hear "lip sing" "lip sinh", (Lip is used to call vulva too and Lip sinh means lip reproduce "lip xinh (beautiful lips)", and lip-sync (the last one is very popular in a queer community where drag performers do their walk and lip sync a famous song). (to Vietnamese, there is no difference between lips and lip when we speak it out)

I continued to make a Vagina Talk workshop and Lip xinh exhibition at Nap hostel, district 1, HCMC. At this time, Chi Ban Lon: a queer and sexuality lexicon, an artbook was very well designed and made. The exhibition also brought so many more materials made in the workshop at that site. You can see that the process is centered in the exhibition rather than just focusing on the display and it is exactly what I aim for and it is the spirit of my art.

sending my proposal to participate in the exhibition Rối, I would love to invite more young people to read, to look at materials, stories, but also to create artwork with me. In this exhibition, I would create a space like a room with transparent fabric like mosquito net which helps to create that space and serves as walls. with the walls, we could display artworks. Inside it, a cozy environment with tables and materials as well as stories, ones who would like to engage could sit down to talk or make artwork with me. it is not about teaching young people about making art. it is not the main focus, but the encounter, the talks, the exchange of ideas and feelings, stories and the creation of stuff, or simply just being there and listening are very important.

I would love to create a path that leads to this "room". In this "path", I will have many stickers that contain "words" we used to talks about sex in my current lexicon Chỉ Bàn Lộn II as well as many stickers with no words. Viewers will be invited to place these stickers on this path. selects words they like or write on these stickers and place them on this path.

I was involved in the making Cabinet exhibition at the University of Fine Art in 2015 brought many lessons when we have a highly debate discussion among NGO staff and museum staff and representations from UNESCO, the Swedish museums and after that, I continued to make many unstraight exhibitions in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar, advocating the rights of LGBTIQ with local NGOs and activists, I think creating multiple layers and messages rather than a single message exhibition is better. Many colleges working at local NGOs often worry about the audience would not understand the message well, I would argue that audience is smart and sophisticated. They want to see more than just the message organizers are willing to deliver. If they see the show as a kind of propaganda to "educate" them, they get bored. It is the situation many photo-voice exhibitions of stories of survivors who told what happened to them had failed as the audiences who received a victim and sad stories all the time but the gray area and the complexity are what we often encounter. Thus, we have to offer rich-material shows for those who feel that the shows allow them to feel, to involve, to interpret, and relate.

I hope this exhibition Rối has a budget for the workshop that I intend to stay in the exhibition from the beginning to the end to end as engaging with the audience in the making, listen and sharing with them is an essential part of my art. --------

here is the writing by Nguyễn Quốc Thành, artist and curator from Nha san collective. He is founder of Queer Forever Festival

Thời gian và không gian giao tiếp, tính chất queer

Thẩm mỹ của sự tham gia trong dự án Bàn Lộn – Vagina Talks và Lip Xinh của nghệ sĩ Đinh Thị Nhung

Nguyễn Quốc Thành

Triển lãm Lip Xinh của Đinh Thị Nhung diễn ra trong tháng 11.2017 trong khuôn khổ Queer Forever! 2017 tại Nhà Sàn Collective. Triển lãm trưng bày gần 300 bức vẽ âm hộ/âm đạo của các tác giả là những người tham gia dự án Bàn Lộn - Vagina Talks từ tháng 9/2015 và do chính nghệ sĩ thực hiện. Bên cạnh đó, Nhung còn giới thiệu một tác phẩm video ngắn, cũng như tư liệu dự án dưới dạng các video phỏng vấn nhân vật và chuyện kể được ghi lại từ trao đổi cá nhân và trong workshop vẽ.

Hàng trăm bức vẽ đa dạng về chất liệu và hình thức trưng bày, như tranh màu nước và mực trên giấy, hình vẽ bằng phấn, than và màu nước trên tường phòng trưng bày, các bức vẽ kỹ thuật số (trên ipad, được scan) chiếu lên tường làm cho người xem không thể tránh được sự hiện diện của hình ảnh âm hộ/âm đạo. Song song với các bức vẽ, tư liệu dự án góp phần nói rõ hơn các vấn đề tâm lý, xã hội liên quan đến nữ giới. Ở góc độ này, triển lãm Lip Xinh và thực hành vẽ âm hộ/âm đạo trong Bàn Lộn - Vagina Talks mang hy vọng gợi mở chia sẻ trải nghiệm riêng tư có thể giúp người tham gia vượt qua những quan niệm tiêu cực gắn liền với cơ thể người phụ nữ, làm xoa dịu tổn thương và cất lên tiếng nói của chính mình. Đây là chủ định của nghệ sĩ, đồng thời cũng là yếu tố quan trọng trong dự án. Tuy vậy, bài viết này muốn hướng sự chú ý của người đọc đến những yếu tố khác, liên quan tới tính nghệ thuật của dự án xã hội có sự tham gia của cộng đồng - dạng dự án thường được các tổ chức vận động xã hội thực hiện trong thời gian gần đây. Lấy cảm hứng từ phê bình của Claire Bishop trong “Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship", bài viết sẽ nêu lên một số quan sát về thẩm mỹ của sự tham gia ở khía cạnh thời gian và không gian giao tiếp. Phần cuối của bài viết sẽ đề cập đến thẩm mỹ queer của dự án, phần nào liên hệ tới thắc mắc có thể nảy sinh về việc triển lãm các bức vẽ âm hộ/âm đạo tổ chức trong chương trình của Queer Forever! 2017.

Tại triển lãm Lip Xinh có một phòng riêng nơi nghệ sĩ chờ đợi bất cứ ai muốn gặp, trao đổi và vẽ với mình. Sự chờ đợi không thành công vì không ai đăng ký gặp và vẽ cùng nghệ sĩ trong thời gian triển lãm. Tuy vậy, nó lại gợi sự chú ý tới cách nghệ sĩ sắp xếp thời gian trong suốt dự án. Nhung tận dụng nhiều cơ hội khác nhau để mời mọi người vẽ cũng mình, tại các cuộc gặp riêng, hay nhân dịp các sự kiện công khai có sự tham gia của cộng đồng. Nghệ sĩ còn tổ chức các workshop vẽ ở nhiều nơi trong và ngoài nước. Thời gian trong dự án của Nhung không diễn ra theo trình tự để dẫn đến kết quả. Nó tồn tại để mở ra những hình thức giao tiếp đa dạng: gặp gỡ bất ngờ, tâm sự riêng tư, những giao tiếp lặp lại và cả những giao tiếp chỉ diễn ra đúng một lần khi cả hai bên tham gia đều biết rằng họ không còn cơ hội gặp lại. Đồng thời, thời lượng của giao tiếp cũng khác nhau: bị giới hạn trong những lần gặp trực tiếp; hoặc để mở, chẳng hạn trong trao đổi các bức vẽ qua email. Dòng chảy thời gian đó mang theo vẻ đẹp của sự bền bỉ cũng như của những khoảnh khắc ngắn ngủi, thoáng qua, trong sự thụ động và chờ đợi.

Trưng bày tác phẩm video trong triển lãm Lip Xinh là sự dàn xếp không gian giao tiếp riêng tư giữa nghệ sĩ và người xem. Tác phẩm video đó được bày trong phòng nhỏ, hẹp, cách biệt, chiếu ánh sáng yếu màu đỏ, tường và sàn lót vải nhung đen. Thêm vào đó, người xem được yêu cầu xem tác phẩm một mình. Vì vậy, không gian đặc biệt này không chỉ dành để tìm hiểu hình ảnh trải nghiệm tình dục của người khác (chính là nghệ sĩ), mà còn trở thành đề xuất để người xem đối diện với trải nghiệm cảm giác ngượng ngùng, xấu hổ khi tiếp xúc với những chia sẻ thầm kín. Các không gian giao tiếp phi vật thể luôn dịch chuyển khi nghệ sĩ và người tham gia dự án gặp mặt, chia sẻ câu chuyện sâu kín liên quan đến trải nghiệm về cơ thể, tình dục. Trong một lần như vậy, người tham gia không tỏ ra ngượng ngùng khi kể chuyện riêng cho nghệ sĩ, nhưng lại nhắc đi nhắc lại sự bối rối của bản thân vì thiếu kỹ năng vẽ. Ở đây, thực hành vẽ hiện diện thay cho cảm xúc riêng tư; trọng tâm giao tiếp dịch chuyển từ không gian riêng tư sang hình thức biểu đạt.

Thẩm mỹ queer hiện lên trong dự án qua sự bông đùa về một số khái niệm liên quan đến tình dục được xã hội coi là thấp kém, cấm kỵ. Người queer tham gia dự án sử dụng lối chơi chữ, nói lái, dùng tiếng lóng, nói xuyên tạc, nói tục đầy tính hài hước và tinh quái, thậm chí đôi khi có phần cay nghiệt khi đề cập đến âm hộ/âm đạo như bộ phận cơ thể, từ biểu đạt và khái niệm. Đồng thời, người ta dùng các tên gọi khác nhau của âm hộ/âm đạo để nói đến cả bộ phận sinh dục của người nữ lẫn hậu môn của người nam. Một cách gián tiếp, họ cũng đả động đến tình dục đồng giới nam. Bông đùa với câu chữ tạo sự vui sướng về mặt tinh thần, ví dụ như trong việc có thể nói thành tiếng tên gọi tục tĩu của âm hộ một cách văn vẻ và không thô tục. Đó cũng là sự sung sướng về thể chất khi phát âm thành tiếng tên gọi của phần cơ thể vốn được coi là cẩm kỵ, không phân biệt là tên gọi đó đã được nguỵ trang bằng chơi chữ hay không. Queer cho rằng cơ thể và tình dục có sức mạnh và giá trị không thể suy suyển cho dù có nói về nó một cách tục tĩu đến mức nào đi chăng nữa. Vì thế mà đây là cũng là thẩm mỹ của sự thách thức các quan niệm xã hội liên quan đến tình dục và việc "tô hồng", biểu đạt tình dục theo hướng tích cực dễ được chấp nhận hơn. Queer tìm thấy giá trị và khoái cảm ở ngay trong tình dục bị xã hội phủ nhận và coi là có giá trị thấp kém.

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Time, interaction and queerness

Aesthetics of participation in Dinh Thi Nhung’s Bàn Lộn-Vagina Talks project and Lip xinh exhibition.

Nguyễn Quốc Thành

Dinh Thi Nhung’s Lip Xinh exhibition is organized in November, 2017 as part of the Queer Forever! 2017 at Nhà Sàn Collective. The exhibition displays more than 300 vagina arts created by Nhung as well as individuals who participated in the Bàn Lộn-Vagina Talks project, initiated in September 2015. In the exhibition, Nhung also introduces a short video work and the project’s documentation (video interviews and personal stories recorded during Nhung’s workshops with the participants)

Hundreds of diverse drawings in terms of forms (from physical paintings to wall drawings with watercolor and digitized projections on iPad and the wall) and materials (watercolor, ink-on-paper, chalk, and charcoal to name a few) make the presence of vaginas/vulvas unavoidable to the audience. In parallel with the works, the documentation helps clarify to visitors the psychological and social issues related to women. In this aspect, the Lip Xinh exhibition and the practice of creating vagina arts in Bàn Lộn -Vagina Talks open up a hopeful venue for participants to overcome negative stereotypes associated with the female body, work on healing themselves, and raise their own voices. This is the artist’s goal and a crucial part of the project. However, in this article, I would like to discuss other concerns, mainly the question about the artistic aspect of this community-engaged project - a format that has been employed by many civil organizations recently. Inspired by Claire Bishop’s critique in “Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship", this article will discuss some observations of the aesthetics of participation within the paradigm of time and space of communication. The last section of this article will mention the queer aesthetics of this project, partly to explain questions that people might raise about the vagina arts exhibition in Queer Forever! 2017.

At the Lip Xinh exhibition, there is a private room where the artist (Nhung) is waiting for anyone who would like to meet, talk, and make arts with her. Unfortunately, no one registered to work with her during the show. However, the room reminds us of how the artist organizes her time during the project. Nhung utilizes various opportunities to invite people to draw with her, either in private meetings or at public events. The artist also organizes drawing workshops in other places in Vietnam and in other countries. Time in Nhung’s project does not follow a chronological format, from beginning to end with a result of a drawing as a focus. Rather, it exists to open up diverse forms of communication: a chance encounter, a private chat, repeated conversations, or a one-off sharing where both parties know they would not have the chance to meet again. The duration of each encounter is also different. Sometimes, it is limited to short direct meeting. Other times, it comes from online discussion via emails, hence becomes more open-ended. Therefore, the flow of time brings with it the beauty of perseverance as well as the short and fleeting moments, passivity, and anticipation.

The video installation at Lip Xinh is an arrangement of private space between the artist and the viewer. The video art is shown in a tiny secluded room, with red weak light and black velvet-covered walls and floor. In addition, the viewer is requested to watch the video alone. Therefore, this special space not only helps the viewer focus on the artist’s sexual experience, but also proposes that the audience face their own feelings of embarrassment during personal sharing. Non-physical communication spaces are always shifting when the artist and the viewers meet to share private stories related to their own bodily and sexual experiences. In one such encounter, the participant did not feel shy to tell her own story to the artist but kept fixating on her lack of drawing skills. Here, the drawing practice emerges to hide personal emotion; the focus of communication shifts from personal space to expression forms.

Queer aesthetics emerge in the project through the jokes about some of the sex-related concepts that are considered to be inferior and taboos by society. Thus, queer participants in the project use puns, wordplay, slangs, as well as other forms of witty and mischievous inverted talks, even sometimes harsh, to refer to the vulvas/vaginas. They also use different terms for vulvas and vaginas to refer to both female genitals and male anus. In an indirect way, they have also talked about homosexuality. This form of frivolous word play gives them mental pleasure in the ability to speak about the vaginas/vulvas in a literal and non-vulgar manner. It is also physically pleasurable to pronounce the name of a body part that is considered taboo, regardless of whether the name was camouflaged by using non-vulgar words or not. Queerness shows us that the body and sexuality has it own value and strength which is unquestionable despite profane words. Thus, queer aesthetics is also shown in the challenge of social norms governing sexuality and pink washing sexuality by using words to to express it in a acceptable way. Thus, queers find values and pleasure within the sexuality that is rejected and defamed by society.

here is writing by Roger Nelson. He is an art historian and curator. His research approaches modern and contemporary arts of Southeast Asia from interdisciplinary perspectives, with a focus on Cambodia and Laos as points of intersection. He was a participating scholar in 'Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art' funded by the Getty Foundation, and a research fellow at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA). In 2019, Roger joined the National Gallery Singapore (NGS) as curator. Vagina Talk: Perhaps You

by Roger Nelson

Perhaps you think that an exhibition that features hundreds of images of vaginas sounds like it might be a bit shocking. Or at least, perhaps it might sound like a confronting environment: a space for awkward giggling and averted eyes, at least for all but the most salaciously self-assured.

But Vagina Talk confounds such expectations. The exhibition—and later on I’ll turn to discussing the insufficiency of the word ‘exhibition’ for describing this project—provides a warmly welcoming, coolly relaxing, and calmly unthreatening space. It is a space to gather, spend time, and chat with friends and with strangers. It’s also a space in which perhaps you might join Nhung Dinh in a conversation about the project, or even to take part in one of her drawing and discussion workshops, which she runs in the space throughout the duration of the exhibition.

That Vagina Talk, the exhibition, is presented in such a welcoming space is no accident. Nhung deliberately chose to hold the project in the kitchen and living room space of Nap Hostel, a decision she made together with Duong Manh Hung, who is named as the exhibition’s curator, but who might also perhaps be considered just as much a kind of creative collaborator to Nhung. An open-plan room, with kitchen facilities and various forms of comfortable seating, the exhibition space feels more like a domestic environment than a business. Upon entering the room, perhaps you might feel that you are entering someone’s private home.

Within this homely, and thus familiar and unthreatening space, Nhung and Hung have carefully created numerous smaller-scale zones for more private interaction—and importantly, this includes interaction with both the exhibited works, and with other people. A group of friends leaning against the kitchen benches and chatting can feel quite private and removed from another group sitting on the floor mats at the other end of the room, because they are separated by a kind of screen which Nhung and Hung have created by hanging sewn sculptures of genitals, and other playful, three-dimensional artworks. A bench along the side of the room allows individuals who don’t feel like chatting to sit alone on a stool and watch video footage of one of the previous iterations of the Vagina Talk project, or of Nhung’s interviews with some of the several hundred individuals who have participated in it. To watch these videos is a surprisingly immersive experience, perhaps as a result of the small screen size, and the provision of headphones for viewing. One screen features specially chosen texts from participants, which a sign explicitly instructs visitors to read alone in the exhibition space, due to the highly personal and potentially confronting nature of the stories told.

A rather more social aspect of the exhibition is the experience of browsing folders filled with transcripts of talks Nhung has held with the participants, as well as online chats, and statements participants have made about their drawings. The rawness and honesty of these testimonies—which range from discussions of politics to accounts of participants’ own bodily experiences—is disarming. The process of reading them is also a particularly active one, as it encourages the reader to try to match each page to its corresponding drawing or painting on the wall, displayed in a riotous jumble amidst hundreds of others.

Perhaps you might want me to quote from some of these statements here. Perhaps you want to hear what these participants have said—about their vaginas, about anything and everything else—when engaging in conversation with Nhung, who is an extraordinarily gifted interlocutor. Perhaps you want me to paraphrase some of the more memorable stories, or some of the more striking moments from the hours of video footage provided within the exhibition space.

But I cannot. To single out any one story or drawing would not be true to the spirit of the project. (Perhaps you might add: and what can I, as a cis-gendered male, say about vaginas, anyway. I feel it’s better to allow the many participants in Vagina Talk speak for themselves—be that in words, in images, or simply in their silent presence.)

This de-emphasising of the individual, in the Vagina Talk exhibition, has often been hailed as an important feminist strategy. The Filipina scholar Rina Angela Corpus, in her collection of essays titled Dance and Other Slippages: Critical Narratives on Women, Dance, and Art (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2014), writes of Filipina choreographer Myra Beltran in terms which may be of some comparative value here. Corpus notes that audiences hold “conditioned notions about what constitutes a ‘great dance’ or a ‘great dancer,’” and that Beltran challenges these by refusing to choreograph in a manner which “flaunts” any individual’s “technique.” Rather that admiring the skill of the dancers, she hopes that her audiences might be inspired to want to join their classes. That “means they felt they could be dancing too, and that’s good,” she affirms. Beltran explains that “nurturing relationships” is central to her choreographic practice; in this there is a strong resonance with Nhung and Hung’s project.

Vagina Talk is a labour of love, one that has been going on for four years already. Nhung has been tirelessly travelling, opening her ears and eyes and mind and heart to the stories of the women, men, and others who she meets along the way, in one of her countless workshops and conversations, structured and unstructured gatherings. Hung, like Nhung, has called on friends to help with hosting the exhibition, and realising all other aspects of it.

It’s important to underscore that Vagina Talk is not only an exhibition: the display of images, video, texts and other objects here seems geared toward sparking more conversations, more participation, more drawing. This exhibition would not make sense as an exhibition alone: essential to its appearance in Nap Hostel in Ho Chi Minh City is the opportunity for Nhung—with Hung’s assistance—to hold more conversations, gather more stories, work with friends and strangers to make more drawings, sew more sculptures, laugh more, and learn more. To simply show these artworks would be meaningless; they are shown here not in the register of didactic address, but rather as a gesture toward an open request. A call for more.

Perhaps you might like to make some more drawings, or to share some more stories.

-- news of the Lip Xinh exhibition for more information, please check: https://www.instagram.com/vaginatalks/ https://www.facebook.com/VulvaTalks