* 1968 in Tokyo (JP), lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City (VN), Tokyo, and New York City (US)

The Ground, the Boat, and the Air: The Passing of the Bodhi Tree, 2007

In his artistic work Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba mainly deals with the sociocultural changes brought about by globalization. The video The Ground, the Root, and the Air: The Passing of the Bodhi Tree was realized in cooperation with fifty students of the Luang Prabang School of Fine Arts in Laos. In wooden motor boats and accompanied by Buddhist chants, the students slowly sail down the 4,000 kilometers long Mekong, one of the longest rivers in Asia. They sit behind easels and try to capture the beauty of the river landscape. As they approach a sacred Bodhi tree, some of the students suddenly jump into the water and swim towards it. In this video Nguyen-Hatsushiba effectively contrasts two different cultural practices. On the one hand, he shows the Western art practice of easel painting, which proceeds from a fixed observational point of view from which the artist views the world according to perspective. On the other hand, he shows the traditional Buddhist practice of worshipping the Bodhi tree, which in contrast to static observation represents a more active sensory experience. In this way Nguyen-Hatsushiba poetically illustrates that in today’s Laos globalized and traditional ways of life exist simultaneously and equally alongside one another. (AB)

The Ground, the Boat, and the Air: The Passing of the Bodhi Tree, 2007