Contextual Statement

Beneath the Membrane is a two-year project by the artist couple Nguyen Khoi and Nguyen Viet Trinh, developed through an exhibition at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts and a short documentary. The project asks: How can mixed media installation practice explore intergenerational and cultural gender norms in Vietnam? And how can collaborative processes between husband and wife subvert such norms?  The artists’ processes of collaboration, reflection, and dialogue form the core of the project, while also opening a space for audiences to experience and thereby reflect on the invisible structures that shape intimacy and collaboration.

The project begins from the recognition that gender norms are both standards and pressures, and their boundaries are fragile (Hoang 2021). Judith Butler argues that not only gender, but even the concept of sex is not immutable; rather, it is produced through multiple discourses of power, including science, politics, medicine, and social regulation (Butler 1999: 10). Sociological research has similarly shown that the dominant values of socialisation shape expressions of femininity and masculinity (Bilton et al. 1983: 148), and that gender roles are closely tied to the biological sex assigned to each individual (Akdemir 2017: 12). Moreover, while the cultural and creative industries are often praised as open, diverse, and egalitarian, persistent inequalities in gender, race, class, and disability remain (Conor, Gill & Taylor 2015). These contradictions provide the wider social context for the project.

The project adopts Arts-Based Research (ABR) as its methodological framework. Collaboration with the Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts not only provides an academic context for exhibition, but also expands dialogue about the relationship between art and social research. In practice, the artists employed methods, such as filming the process of collaboration and working with their everyday materials, including beads, pumice stones, clothing, household objects, as well as movement, the body, poetry, books, and technology. Acts of care, personal memories, and intimate emotions were transformed into artworks, serving as visual data to critically reflect on gender norms.

In terms of public outcomes, the project includes both an exhibition and a documentary film. The exhibition is conceived as a discursive form, a political event, and an aesthetic space that activates conversations about gender. Walter Benjamin noted that “exhibition-value” is not only about visibility, but also a political practice that brings art into the public sphere, creating debate and collective meaning (Steeds 2014: 15). Steeds further emphasises the exhibition as an expanded aesthetic space where display, layout, and audience experience co-produce meaning (Steeds 2014: 13). Alongside this, documentary film is used as an accessible, popular, and truthful medium that can transcend spatial and cultural barriers. Benjamin argued that mechanical reproduction technologies expand the accessibility and experience of art on a large scale (Benjamin 2008: 12). Hito Steyerl also highlight that documentary is both a tool for presenting truths and a site where humans, machines, images, and sounds connect (Stallabrass & Whitechapel Art Gallery 2013: 145), opening up possibilities for imagining alternative social structures.

References:

• AKDEMIR, Nihan. 2017. ‘Gender and Its Representation in Contemporary Arts’. European Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 6 (11), 11-22.

• BUTLER, Judith. 1999. Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion of Identity /. 10th anniversary ed. New York ; Routledge.

• CHAU, Hoang. 2021. ‘Gender stereotypes - norms or pressure?’. Youth Newspaper [online]. Available at: https://tuoitrethudo.vn/khuon-mau-gioi-chuan-muc-hay-ap-luc-158019.html [accessed 24 April 2025]

• CONOR, Bridget, Rosalind GILL and Stephanie TAYLOR. 2015. ‘Gender and Creative Labour’. The Sociological review (Keele) 63(S1), 1–22.

• LEAVY, Patricia. 2020. Method Meets Art : Arts-Based Research Practice. Third edition. New York, New York ; The Guilford Press.

• STALLABRASS, Julian and publisher WHITECHAPEL ART GALLERY. 2013. Documentary. Edited by Julian Stallabrass. London: Whitechapel Gallery.

• STEEDS, Lucy (ed.). 2014. Exhibition. London: Whitechapel Gallery.