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Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba
Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas: Battle of Easel Point - Memorial Project Okinawa, 2003

Photo: Courtesy Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York

Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba

Collection

Single-channel video installation, color, sound
15 min 3 sec
Produced by Mizuma Art, Tokyo and Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba with assistance from MACRO (Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma) and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas: Battle of Easel Point - Memorial Project Okinawa is part of Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba's 2003 'Memorial Project' on the Vietnam War - all videos shot under-water. The film refers to Okinawa both as an important battle site during World War II and as a training ground for American troops during the Vietnam War; fifty divers, swimming in groups underwater, seem to conduct military exercises that culminate in their painting stars on fifty red canvases. The narration is supported by a vivid sound track. Composed by Nguyen-Hatsushiba with Quoc Bao, a Vietnamese pop-music composer, the remix of James Bond movie themes suggests action and excitement, thus ironically commenting on the tradition of glorifying war heroes. Portraying the yellow star seems to indicate a search for national identity, a need for restoring a lost dignity. But what comes out of this unsettling painting session has the face of the old enemy. The "other" is America - not just in its military might but in its cultural hegemony, whether in movies or painting. The artist indicates that there is no way out of that embrace: The mirror image of the Vietnamese will be forever blurred with the faces of America.

Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba (Tokyo, 1968) is a Japanese Vietnamese artist.
He was born in Tokyo to a Japanese mother and a Vietnamese father in 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive staged by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops.[3] He earned an M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1994 after receiving his B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1992.
He has had solo exhibitions at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rome, Kunsthalle Wien, Austria, Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art / Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and a retrospective of his work was shown at the Manchester Art Gallery in England. His work has been included in numerous biennials, including the Shanghai Biennale, the Venice Biennale, the Istanbul Biennial, and the São Paulo Biennale. He currently lives in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

This biography is from Wikipedia under an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License.

artist's website

http://www.nguyen-hatsushiba.net

Jun Nguyen-HatsushibaHo! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas: Battle of Easel Point - Memorial Project Okinawa, 2003

Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba
Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas: Battle of Easel Point - Memorial Project Okinawa, 2003