Description

Vũ Dân Tân’s favorite quote from Dostoevsky “Beauty will Save the World”, which was frequently repeated in textual inserts in other series of his works, this time served as the title of the sculptural installation. It comprises 12 cardboard figures, each of which depicts the female body’s shape and associated clothing. Some have drawings or writings on them. This piece reveals the artist’s unconventional view of female beauty and sexuality as well as his thoughts on the freedom and place of women in the world, presence and absence, materiality and immateriality, and other perennial philosophical issues in art.

For the first time this installation was shown at the exhibition Subverted Boundaries (curated by Iola Lenzi) at “Sculpture Square” in Singapore in 2003.

Text by Iola Lenzi, PhD, Historian of Contemporary Southeast Asian Art. Lenzi has conducted extensive research on the contemporary practice of Vũ Dân Tân, located in the context of contemporary art in 1990s Hanoi.