This review was commissioned by STIR and published on January 7, 2025

*Tầm Tã – Soaked in the Long Rain*, Trần Lương, Jameel Arts Centre, 2024. *Image: Daniella Baptista; Courtesy of Art Jameel*

Vietnamese artist Trần Lương’s survey exhibition Tầm Tã—Soaked in the Long Rain at Dubai’s Jameel Arts Centre delves into personal and political histories.

by Anna Seaman

“I grew up under a rain of bombs,” says Vietnamese contemporary artist Tran Luong, referring to his childhood; between the ages of 5 and 13, he was sent to seek refuge in rural areas during the American bombing of North Vietnam. Whether the downpour in the poetic title of Tầm Tã – Soaked in the Long Rain, his first international survey exhibition that opened at Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai in December 2024, represents the war, societal struggles, or Vietnam’s tropical climate, there is a sense of renewal and regeneration, where enduring hardship leads to resilience, wisdom and spiritual growth.

Installed on the ground floor of Jameel Arts Centre on Dubai’s Al Jaddaf waterfront, the exhibition spans more than 30 years of Trần's multifaceted practice, highlighting his pivotal role in shaping contemporary art as a creator, curator and institution builder in Vietnam and across Southeast Asia. The curatorial text explains the exhibition’s title - Tầm Tã – as both a Vietnamese idiom suggesting a feeling of being overwhelmed by an experience and the name of an artist educational programme that Trần runs in Hanoi. However, it also carries deeply nuanced connotations concerning the imagery and symbolism of water that are especially heightened by the creek-front location of the Dubai exhibition.

*From the Underwater World Series by Trần Luong.* *Courtesy of Art Jameel. Photography by Daniella Baptista*

Upon entering, the dark walls and sounds of dripping immediately transport the viewer into a watery atmosphere. The paintings in the first room – from Trần's Underwater World series – depict a mythical version of one of Vietnam’s most famous legends: the story of a poor fisherman Chu Dong Tu who marries a royal princess Tien Dung. Trần's lyrical and colourful paintings transform the princess into a water goddess who aids humanity. Organic shapes twist and morph across the canvases, one enduring symbol persists: small slit-like apertures housing small pairs of eyes that resemble abstract amoeba. They are, according to the artist, inspired by the many hours he spent exploring the riverbeds and the underwater world during his early years away from family and school during the war. Yet they could also be spaceships, bombs or alien forms. As an artistic symbol, they mature in Trần's Flowing series created during the 1990s, where the shape is a recurring motif upon various textures such as sensitive paper, canvas and beneath fishing nets. These two bodies of works presented in adjacent rooms feel like pages from the same chapter rather than distinct presentations. Indeed, the entire exhibition has a circular flow, which leads audiences seamlessly from one room to the next and is amplified by the physical waterway surrounding the gallery. The darkness of the exhibition’s start gives way to daylight and the role of water is never far from mind. There is a model of a traditional Vietnamese floating house hanging in a window overlooking Dubai’s Creek and in the centre of one gallery is a concave pedestal holding a shallow pool of water with the amoeba eyes painted inside and peering out. Questions emerge: Is water a vehicle for destruction or renewal? Is the audience a participant in the flow or flotsam bobbing on the waves? Are we witnesses to the river of Trần's personal history? Are we being cleansed and reborn by the experience?

Tran Luong, *Lập Lòe* (2012). Installation view in *Tầm Tã – Soaked in the Long Rain*, Trần Lương, Jameel Arts Centre, 2024. *Image: Daniella Baptista; Courtesy of Art Jameel*

Perhaps the peak of the show is the presentation of Trần's three-channel video installation Lập Lòe (2012) (translating to roughly, “blink” or “flicker”). Presented on three large screens in a darkened room, the visitor’s flow is brought to a momentary stop to reflect, in this case, upon the lasting effects of trauma and hardship. The work is derived from a performance that began in 2007 and later became an interactive performance series called Welts, for which Tran invited audiences, in eleven cities across Asia, to snap a red scarf against his naked torso. The film shows only a close-up shot of the torso and the minor welts caused by the scarf’s movement. The red scarf, worn by school pupils in Vietnam as well as other countries, is an item of historical and political significance associated with communism and was often used for playground games. This performance, one of Trần's most widely known pieces, is an ongoing exploration into the capacity of violence that people may exhibit when given permission to do so.

The exhibition ends with a historical presentation of books, newspaper clippings and video interviews showing Tran’s ongoing and steadfast commitment to building and strengthening the cultural infrastructure of Vietnam. The artist describes himself as an artist, curator, organiser and social developer. “I was born at a specific moment in history and I witnessed many things in my country,” he says. “Because of that, it is my responsibility not just to create art but to create the environment for it too.”

Installation view of *An up-to-date Dragon*, 1998, part of ‘Khởi Thuỷ - Initial’, Trần Lương's first solo show in Nhà Sàn Studio, Hanoi, Vietnam 1998Image: Courtesy of Trần Lương

Trần co-founded the Gang of Five art collective (1983-1996) and in 1998, he co-founded Nhà Sàn Studio, the country’s first artist-led experimental art space. He was also the founding director of the Hanoi Contemporary Art Centre in 2000, a post from which he resigned in 2003 in protest of government corruption. In 2020 he co-founded the Center for Art Patronage and Development (APD), an organisation focusing on artistic development with the orientation of intersecting activities between artistic development and social development. He has continued to direct APD’s programme since its founding. Among his collaborative projects that take art to the people to generate debate about ways of living are the Mạo Khê Coal Mine Art Project, involving workshops with a worker’s community in a rural coal mine; and On the Banks of the Red River, which presented interactive performance in an impoverished area of Hanoi.

“I have been working in social development projects for more than 25 years where art is not used as an academic tool but rather a way to interpret life, to break through the gap between rich and poor and the divides of education and lack of it. Social development projects are art and art is also a way to fight for justice,” he says. “I am on a mission to create art and enable others to create because art is for everyone.”

‘Tầm Tã – Soaked in the Long Rain’ runs from December 19, 2024 - May 18, 2025, at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai. The show is co-organised by Art Jameel, the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre and The Art Gallery of Western Australia, where the exhibition will be touring from 2025 to 2027.

Tran Luong: Tầm Tã – Soaked in the Long Rain