A voyage along the Mekong River with Thao Nguyen Phan

By Richard Martin

In Rebecca Solnit’s recent memoir, Recollections of My Non-Existence (2020), the American author discusses the journey her work has taken towards ‘a more intimate, lyrical kind of writing, one where the spirit guiding the connections and trajectory was intuitive and associative rather than linear or logical’. It’s a perfect description for the wandering pathways fashioned by the Vietnamese artist Thao Nguyen Phan, whose exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery is her first solo show in the UK.

Like Solnit, Phan combines a politically charged ecological consciousness with an inquisitive, essayistic approach that brings together myths, allusions and quotations from a range of sources. The centrepiece of the show at Chisenhale, a 16-minute single-channel film entitled Becoming Alluvium (2019), begins with a series of questions from the great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore: ‘Why did the lamp go out?’, ‘Why did the flower fade?’, ‘Why did the stream dry up?’, ‘Why did the harp-string break?’ Like Tagore’s, Phan’s responses to these poetic puzzles suggest that a desire to resolve or master them only leads to further destruction.

Becoming Alluvium (2019), Thao Nguyen Phan. Installation view at Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2020. Photo: Andy Keate; courtesy the artist

Becoming Alluvium is, as the end credits inform us, ‘inspired by the beauty and suffering of the Mekong’ – the awe-inspiring river that runs for some 2,700 miles through Southeast Asia. Phan focuses on locations in South Vietnam, and structures her film via three sections or ‘reincarnations’, a term that reflects the river’s long spiritual associations and the artist’s own Buddhist upbringing...READ MORE

Cover image: Becoming Alluvium (2019), Thao Nguyen Phan. Installation view at Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2020. Photo: Andy Keate; courtesy the artist