“I grew up in a Buddhist family,” Thao Nguyen Phan says of her childhood in Vietnam. “Even though the religion here seems to emphasise peace and mindfulness, the land is turbulent, there is always conflict, and the environmental impact on the river has been very dramatic.” The Mekong, a vast river that extends from the Tibetan plateau through to the delta in Vietnam, about an hour’s drive from Ho Chi Minh City where Phan was born and lives today, is the source of the artist’s exhibition at Tate St Ives. A collection of dream-like films, paintings and installations, it serves as a ballad …for a wounded waterway.
As a child in the 1990s, Phan listened to folk songs that glorified the transformation of the Mekong “from a jungle with crocodiles and wildlife” to “a rich place for human habitation and rice cultivation”. But the disastrous effects of industrialisation over the past decade led her “to question these stereotypical views of the river”. After graduating from art school in Chicago in 2014, Phan became a protege of the revered American video and performance artist Joan Jonas, and has been exhibiting internationally since. In response to the unfolding ecological crisis, Phan has created her own melancholy folklore.
