Lost & Found Agency
Schools of Thought, a talk by Minh Nguyen
Minh Nguyen
with Fogo Island Arts & Art Metropole
September 28, 2021
6:00pm EST
In partnership with Art Metropole, Fogo Island Arts presented Schools of Thought, a talk by Islands Writing Residency recipient and forthcoming artist-in-residence, Minh Nguyen. Schools of Thought is the inaugural presentation in the Lost & Found Agency online talk series.
Though the latter half of the 20th century saw a shift from the object to idea in art across the globe, the dematerialization of art in socialist and “post-socialist” contexts reveal particular social tensions, including struggles against state power. Taking Vietnam—and the burst of experimental practices that followed the 1986 Đổi Mới “socialist-oriented market economy” reforms—as departure point, this talk examines the possibilities and limitations of conceptual art wielded as a covert form of free speech, in contexts where free speech’s recognizable forms have been suppressed. This talk also considers the influence of the communist imaginary, on artists responding to their countries’ communist heritage, and on avant-garde art movements more broadly.