Dream of March and August<\/em> (2018\u200a\u2013\u200aongoing) is a series of soft and ethereal watercolours on natural silk by Ho Chi Minh City\u200a-based artist Thao Nguy\u00ean Phan. From a traditional harvesting perspective\u200a\u2014\u200abefore the global food trade was all the rage\u200a\u2014\u200athe months of March and August were by far the direst for Vietnamese people: the provisions were almost depleted while the crops were not yet ready to be harvested. In this series, Phan personifies March and August as two siblings. T\u00e1m (August) tragically dies from starvation, becoming a forever-hungry ghost, which sets Ba (March) on an endless quest to reconnect with his ghost-sister. Phan depicts the siblings meeting in a dream-like, phantasmagorical space. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March on a Honda Dream<\/em> (2020) we see Ba\u200a\u2014\u200aopen shirt, stern expression\u200a\u2014\u200ariding a motorbike in an environment echoing that of the dream: the soft pastel colors bleed into one another, the space is ambiguous and open to interpretation. The Execution <\/em>(2019) presents another confounding scene: angel-like figures with long braided hair are floating in the air, rifles in hand, unbeknownst to farmers hard at work just below. Phan plays up the fragmented narrative of the dream as a time-blurring device that can connect many coexisting worlds at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Rain, Brise Soleil<\/em> (2021\u200a\u2013\u200aongoing) is a sixteen-minute three-channel video installation that operates under similar oneiric temporalities. Phan explores artisanship\u2019s resistance to a streamlined US imperialist architecture and the na\u00efve utopia that sometimes accompanied forays into modernism. Brise soleils\u200a\u2014\u200aa common artisanal feature of Global South structures\u200a\u2014\u200aare designed to keep buildings from overheating under a merciless sun, and in this artwork they become the embodiment of the long legacy of Vietnamese-Khmer craftspersonship. Parallel to this foray into architecture is a love story between a Khmer woman and a Vietnamese medicinal healer, set during eighteenth-century feudal wars and articulated around the lushness of the Mekong Delta. A story of longing, intergenerational knowledge transmission, and love, First Rain, Brise Soleil<\/em> expands the notion of dream from individually experienced to encompassing community-based aspirations, mythologies, and hopes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently pursuing a PhD inhumanities at Concordia University, Jo\u00eblle Dub\u00e9 is researching the intersectional temporalities of intergenerational (in)justices and contemporary art. Positing relationality at the centre of her theoretical preoccupations, she investigates ways of rearticulating the relationship between the living and life-to-come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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