An end of A. Farm Season 1 festival

Opening: Saturday 18.05.19 @5:00pm – 10:30pm
Exhibition on view: Sunday 19th May – Wednesday 22nd May (inclusive) from 11am – 7pm
Location: A. Farm
96/1 Tan Thoi Nhat 6, District 12, HCMC
Free entrance

As A. Farm turns one, it’s fitting to muse on the lives of the resident artists that inhabit its space. Together they work alone in a semi-communal setting, each experimenting in their own personal laboratory, collectively inventing new patterns for living and creating with each other. They exist solo-sans-solo: alone-in the absence of-(being) alone.

It’s been a path of self-reflection for Trag Lem and Tuyền Nguyễn: both artists take on the subject of themselves as an artist given a studio to work, but through the contrasting mediums of performance and painting. Elsewhere, the tangible and intangible meet where Alisa Chunchue crosses disciplines to investigate the body and its environment, juxtaposed with a retracing of diaspora memory by Canadian-Vietnamese artist Karen Thao La. Meanwhile Scott Anderson’s deconstructed sculptural works and paintings touch delicately on the boundary between abstraction and representation. Newly-arrived residents also join the show, with Natalia Ludmila presenting her current research in an open-studio format, and Studio z1 contributing performances to the event.

The End of Season Festival is a chance for artists to present together the personal projects they have been developing alone. It has been the cumulative ending that each artist has worked towards, and we are proud to present their results. solo-sans-solo celebrates the diversity of these artistic visions and the plurality of practices seen at A. Farm. In Season 1 we have been pleased to welcome residents from Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Australia, France, Italy, Ireland, the USA, Canada and Mexico, working across a variety of mediums, who have all helped distinguish A. Farm as an internationally focused project.

solo-sans-solo also celebrates the organisational structure that has been evolving. The project opened in May 2018, the collaborative result of a desire to support and grow the Vietnamese art world from three committed art-lovers: Quynh Nguyen of the Nguyen Art Foundation, Sàn Art’s Dinh Q. Lê, and MoT+++ founder Thanh Tran Ha. From dinner table dreams rose A. Farm, an international art residency in District 12, an alliance of three distinctly different organisations united by a common goal.

A. Farm’s first year has been an experimental endeavour in co-management, co-living and co-operation. One year on and we’ve hosted two In Progress: Open Studios, two private critiques, a three-day series of word play and writing workshops, multiple educational gatherings, communal dinners, and studio visits as well as visits from travelling artists and curators, a residency exchange, a 48-hour non-stop sound jam, a dance festival, a theatre group rehearsal, two artist-run bars, the first All Animals Are Equal exhibition and the first end-of-season festival Bye.Bay.Buy. To everyone who has been involved: audience, artists, critics and organisers alike, we are so happy to be turning one with you.

Happy Birthday A. Farm!