the kingfisher’s beak

Duration: 19.07.2023 – 20.08.2023
Opening hours: Tues-Sat, 11am-5:30pm*
Locations:

• Sàn Art, Millennium Masteri, B6.17 & B6.16, 132 Ben Van Don, W.6, D.4, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (enter via Nguyen Huu Hao)
• Nguyễn Kiệu Island

Sàn Art is pleased to collaborate with urban artist Liar Ben on the project, the kingfisher’s beak, a public art project that takes inspiration from every day’s life at Cù lao Nguyễn Kiệu, a small island that is attached to District 4.

Kingfishers are known to be amongst the most precise hunting birds despite their small bodies. They usually live close to the water and tend to observe their prey very carefully before swooping down from a perch. Playfully taking the role of a kingfisher, the artist carefully crafts and invites the audience into his playground, an expedition starting at Sàn Art, leisurely strolling along the canal and exploring the artworks amidst the scattered urban lives. 

Taking a complicated urban space as the core, the project calls for the consideration of social and spatial relations during artistic production as well as consumption. We will be taking a strolling exercise, paying homage to ‘dérive’ but this time instead of drifting with no purpose, try to pay attention to how existing lives are layered on top of abandoned ones, how spaces can be treated as both cultural and political landmark, but at the same time, a playground… a concrete jungle suddenly turning into water under the beak of the kingfisher.

*Since the artwork is displayed in a public space, we will welcome visitors until 5:30pm only.

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Curator: vicky
Artist: Kingfisher
Painter: LiarBen
Animation artist: Caburn
Model product: Doan Kinh Quoc
Photographer: Hai O.
Booklet design: Vicky & LiarBen