The 11th Winds of Artist in Residence 2011 Part 2

The Artist in Residence Program Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (FAAM) invites emerging artists from Asian countries and regions to promote diverse artistic and cultural exchange programs though art-making and workshops.

For this year’s second term of the program, Nguyen Phuong Linh from Vietnam and Lu Yang from China were invited and stayed for 70-days from September.  We are pleased to announce an exhibition, Winds of Artist in Residence 2011- Part2-, highlighting the achievements of the artists during their time in Fukuoka.

Nguyen Phuong Linh has created two installation works. In the one, she combines dust collected from various sites in Fukuoka where she interviewed local residents with photographs taken at the same sites.  The other work is a landscape installation made from stone powder quarried from Asakura City.

Lu Yang has produced a video showing frogs dancing underwater, which was created by connecting keyboards to the frog’s nerve system.  This work is also the fruit of the collaboration between the artist, a bionics team and acoustic specialists in Fukuoka.

Both artists have made an achievement within a limited time of 70-days. We would like to invite you to see the outcome of their art-making and exchanges in this exhibition.

Nguyen Phuong Linh
Born in Hanoi, Vietnam, 1985
Lives and works in Hanoi

This young Vietnamese artist creates sculptural and installation works using natural materials such as salt, soil, and plants as well as aged and discarded objects.  She is also involved actively in Nha San studio, an art space in Hanoi, as an organizer.  In Fukuoka, the artist collected dust from various places as she wandered and interviewed local residents.  It was a quiet act to resurrect the memory and history of the places and people.  Moreover, the “Stonescape” installation made from stone powder shows the ephemerality and strength of natural materials, as they continue to exist transforming into different forms.

Artist’ s Statement
STONESCAPE
Together with dust project, stonescape is created by using a massive volume of mountain dust, which is
collected after a process of exploding and digging to mine stone from mountains in Asakura City. I care
about the contradictions between the impulse to destroy and the compulsion to mend. Stone dust is used
as a material to mend a destroyed landscape and create a new artificial one. Every space, every one, every thing will be back to nature as I believe

DUST PROJECT
I was born in the city of dust
The traffic carries dust
The rain stirs up dust
The sun shines through dust
Dust of construction, the dust of workers,
dust of the street,
Dust of a river, a cathedral, a kindergarten
Dust of the Long Bien bridge, of the Lenin statue,
of Uncle Ho
Dust of tobacco, dust of rubber, and dust of soap
The grandparents have long returned to dust, the
apartment block is now full of dust
The dust of a journey,
Fukuoka is clean and everything but there is still dust,
The dust of a bomb
Dust of the brothels
Dust of the volcanoes, dust of the seaports
The dust of an island
The eyes blur with dust
The dust of a wandering star
I thought collecting dust from nostalgic places and
objects meant collecting memories.
But the dust has no memory, no value, no meaning.
It is just dust.

Lu Yang
Born in Shanghai, China, 1984
Lives and works in Shanghai

Having studied media-arts at the China Academy of Art and her talent recognized early by Zhang Peili, one of China’s foremost video artists, Lu Yang belongs to a new generation of artists on the cutting edge of media art practices. With her interest in medical and scientific fields, the artist challenges to control the physiological limit of corporality by combining human and animal bodies with cutting-edge media.  During her residency in Fukuoka, the artist created a fascinatingly bizarre work that shows frogs dancing to the music controlled by electrical stimulation given to the sciatic nerve of the frogs.

Artist’ s Statement
My project “Revived Zombie Frogs Underwater Ballet,” originally started from 2009 has been consummated
as a video work. This work takes a form of MTV showing dead frog’ s dance controlled by Midi controller
and Midi signal. For the avoidance of cruelty to animals, dead frog bodies originally used in a medical
dissection experiment were re-used for this work.
Because of my strong affinity with CONTROL, the control of people and animals, I have been creating my
works by using technology and various media. Such a control totally relies on the cerebration of human
and they cannot escape from the physiological reality. Yet they use their bodies to create devices so they
can break away from these limitations while they are being controlled by their physical form or illness.
I have strongly desired to substantiate a cross-cutting collaboration work. Art itself is a small discipline and I
am hoping to learn more by combining it with other disciplines.
Finally I would like to express my sincere appreciation for Fukuoka Asian Art Museum and all technical
specialists and their staff members who cooperated with my art-making.