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10 Chancery Lane Gallery
G/F, 10 Chancery Lane,
Soho, Central,
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Tropicana Migration
by 10 Chancery Lane Gallery
Location: 10 Chancery Lane Gallery Soho
Artist(s): LĂȘ Dinh Q.
Date: 12 Mar - 30 May 2015

10 Chancery Lane Gallery is pleased to present Tropicana Migration, an exhibition of new work by Dinh Q. Lê. Lê is best known for his large-scale photographic weavings and video works that question the way in which world events are perceived. Dealing in his art practice with the Vietnam War, Lê observes its implications on his country and his own personal history. Tropicana Migration will include a large installation, photographic weavings, photographs and video works. Lê examines the evolution of his country through tourism and how still today the Vietnam War’s presence continues to be an ironic attraction.  The exhibition continues Lê’s investigation into his homeland, the Vietnam War and how it is placed today by the tourism industry.

Dinh Q. Lê will create an installation at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery that takes a critical and humorous look at the tourism industry in Vietnam.  Lê analyzes the migration patterns of the tourists who come from the First World to vacation in developing countries like Vietnam, escaping their brutal winter in search for warmth, as well as taking advantage of the economic differences to be waited on hand and foot. As countries like Vietnam need tourism dollars, it provides and puts up with almost anything and through the process has created some of the most surreal situations in order to keep tourists coming.

Beginning in Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital, tourists are warmly welcome by dead Vietnamese revolutionary communist leader Ho Chi Minh in his refrigerated mausoleum.  Traveling South, visitors can tour the former Demilitarized Zone and Danang where one can enjoy being pampered at the many five-stars resorts along “China Beach,” once home to the busiest US military air base during the brutal Vietnam War. This is where American soldiers once bombed North Vietnam in the morning and could still make it to the beach to get a tan in the afternoon.  Tourists can continue even further South to visit the village Son My, also known as My Lai, where 400 women and children were massacred on March 16, 1968, and then visit the beautiful beaches there and enjoy some cheap fresh seafood.  Lastly, reaching Ho Chi Minh City, locally known as Saigon (a form of resistance by the local Vietnamese), where the food is divine and the flourishing sex trade is ready to serve your every need for a reasonable price.  A place where even former glam-rock singer and pedophile Garry Glitter found his paradise until he was caught.

Dinh Q. Lê will transform 10 Chancery Lane Gallery into Danang Beach with floor-to-ceiling wall coverings. A refrigerated wax sculpture of Ho Chi Minh will greet gallery visitors.  An installation of brightly painted coconuts, their first shoots of palm erupting, cover the floor. Lê uses the coconut as a symbol of migration as well; coconuts float around the seas finding beaches to sprout from causing their own migrations and transplantations.  Lê transports Ho Chi Minh to Hong Kong to offer the same sort of voyeurism as we peer through the glass door of the refrigerator.

A series of tourism promotional posters will greet visitors, espousing reasons why you should come back and visit Vietnam with slogans like “Come back to Vietnam! We promised we won’t spit on you.” which add further incongruity to the seemingly pleasant colors and relaxed feel of the exhibition.  A group of new photo-weavings will focus on the tourist experiences combining images of luxurious resorts with horrific images from the Vietnam War.

Though at first glance the exhibition seems lighthearted, it ends on a dark note with a video that will meditate on the problem of sexual abuse of children in Vietnam by the growing number of foreign pedophiles touring and staying in Vietnam.

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