Gặp Việt Nam

In 1999, I had the privilege of being invited to participate in Gặp Việt Nam, a seminal exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures) in Berlin, curated by Michael Thoss and Sabine Vogel. I participated under the name Alisa Lieu-Anh Kottmair. 

The exhibition brought together contemporary artists primarily from Vietnam, as well as from the Vietnamese diaspora. I was thrilled to see works by artists associated with the renowned Salon Natascha in Hanoi, which I had visited two years earlier, and to experience a performance by Ea Sola, whom I had sought out in Paris during independent research on the Vietnamese diaspora there. 

My contribution to the exhibition was Long Live Tourism! Cigarette Campaign, a fictitious three-part advertising campaign consisting of two large color posters, a black-and-white photo series, and video documentation of a public space performance.

My work was not ready in time for the catalogue, so images from my photo series If the Walls Were to Have Ears and Long Live Tourism! Useful Souvenirs: Chopstick Bags were included.

Excerpt from the catalogue introduction by curator Michael Thoss
(own English translation): 

The Gap Viet Nam project is both a workshop and an exhibition. We have invited 16 visual artists from Vietnam and the global Vietnamese diaspora to Berlin for a month to collaborate and showcase their work. The workshop format of this gathering – Gap in Vietnamese – is meant to reflect the dynamic spirit of transformation that characterizes young Vietnam today.

Complementing this is the external perspective that artists of Vietnamese heritage bring to the land of their parents. Through the medium of contemporary art, the project explores both Vietnam’s cultural diversity and its divided history.

The Vietnam program at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt also seeks to contribute to the historically fraught dialogue between Vietnamese communities within the country and abroad. Every diaspora holds onto a romanticized, historically rooted image of the “true” homeland. We can observe this in Berlin as well, where the “reunification” of South and North Vietnamese communities in the city’s western and eastern parts remains incomplete. Both groups maintain distinct, often conflicting, visions of home – a dynamic mirrored among the 2.5 million Vietnamese living in France, Australia, and the USA.

At the same time, we must acknowledge the contradictory “Vietnam images” that persist in German society and continue to permeate Berlin today. The fate of divided Berlin was once framed as tied to the outcome of the Vietnam War, a belief deeply ingrained in an entire generation of East and West Germans. Both the 1968 student movement and official solidarity campaigns exploited Vietnam for their own, albeit different, purposes over many years. The fact that widespread sympathy for South Vietnamese boat people and North Vietnamese contract workers has largely given way to a general mistrust toward the approximately 90,000 Vietnamese living in Germany today speaks more to Germany’s own insecurities than to the Vietnamese community itself.

With this collaborative Vietnam program, Haus der Kulturen der Welt embarks on a two-month exploration of contemporary Vietnamese culture, transcending national borders and ethnic stereotypes. Our goal is neither to create new canvases for Western projections, fears, or fantasies nor to stage a platform for national self-representation. In the tenth year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the gathering of more than 50 artists, writers, and scholars from Vietnam and the global Vietnamese diaspora in Berlin carries a special symbolic significance.