Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Flash Art International 38:241 (March-April 2005): 53
Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba,
January 13- February 26,
Lehmann Maupin
This first New York solo show of Jun Ngyuen-Hatsushiba – an artist who has already done the rounds of just about every major biennale in the world – is an eerily timed debut given that his videos feature amphibious struggles staged in waters dangerously close to areas hardest hit by the devastating December 26 tsunami. But, Ngyuen-Hatsushiba’s videos are site-specific memorials to historical disasters effecting Vietnam and Japan – the countries of the artist’s own bi-national origin.
Memorial ProjectMinamata: Neither Either nor Neither – A Love Story (2002), pays homage to the small Japanese factory town where the Chisso Corporation dumped mercury into Minamata Bay from 1932 through 1968 causing thousands to suffer and die of the nervous condition dubbed "Minamata Disease." The single channel piece, Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas – The Battle of Easel Point – Memorial Project Okinawa (2003), is staged underwater near the former WWII U.S. Military base and Vietnam War U.S. ammunition depot.
Both pieces in the show feature divers performing underwater and inter-cut with sequences symbolically related to the memorial sites. While Minimata is more abstracted in its symbolism than Okinawa, both works proceed with an almost Eisensteinian montage logic that challenges the viewer to “make sense.” Moreover, the artist’s occasionally arresting underwater videography is regularly interrupted by canned video filter effects, distracting from the purely aesthetic impact of the imagery and challenging the disengaged viewer to take note of history and its enduring repercussions.