‘San Art Laboratory’ and the Artist Talk by Lena Bui had regrettably been canceled. This is due to license restrictions. San Art apologizes for any inconvenience that this may cause.

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Starts at 6PM with a talk by Lêna Bùi about her 2015 project in Nepal, where she worked with women living in the historical area of Patan in Kathmandu as well as researchers from the Oxford Clinical Research Unit Nepal who studies waterborne disease in the area. Lêna will share her experiences of creating a safe storytelling space by combining languages and images.

Following Lena’s talk, at 7:30 PM we have the Open Studio for three residential artists of San Art’s Lab session 8: Questal Tay (Singapore), Nguyen Quoc Dung (Daklak, Việt Nam), Dara Kong (Phnom Penh, Cambodia). We welcome you to the studios of the artists and engage in conversations with them!

Quoc Dung is creating a painting journal about the transgender community. From his field work, Quốc Dũng records the inner thoughts of  a transgenders in the incomplete body of a woman. Their beauty shines through as they continue fighting everyday against stigmas from society and religions so their own identity and community can be accepted.

Questal Tay began her residency with the perspective of British author William Blake that the world exists in a grain of sand and heaven resides inside a wild flower. Questal explores a myriad of materials around Sài Gòn and constructs her story of reality using them. Questal wonders if these narratives will coincide with her understanding of Blake’s quote.

For Dara Kong, the pen represents memories. His drawings aim to connect experiences, emotions, and memories of the self. For him, the envelope is a metaphor for messages between two people, but who is the one to keep those memories? Dara contemplates the question of how to most effectively store memories from the past.