The Youth Fine Arts Festival 2011 was officially launched by the Ministry of Cultural, Sports and Tourism and the Vietnam Fine Arts Association today to create a breakthrough in performance and installation art which remain new in Vietnam contemporary fine arts.
Young artists under 35 can join the Festival and each could have a maximum of three entries created in the period of 2008 - 2011.
According to the painter, Tran Khanh Chuong, Chairman of Vietnam Fine Arts Association, “the festival will be a fair competition for young painters”. About 80 percent of fine arts activities in the world is off-the-easel work (editor’s note: meaning not the traditional type of painting or drawing often done using an artist’s easel; for example, “performance”, “video”, “industrial” (using unusual modern-day, often construction materials) or “installations” (using every day, functional materials, often to convey a particular idea or message), while such kind of fine arts remain limited in Vietnam.
Mr Vi Kien Thanh, the Director of the Fine Arts, Photography and Exhibition Department of the Ministry of Cultural, Sports and Tourism, said that “The lack of installation art, performance art or video art in the large playground of Vietnam fine arts is not because people do not pay attention to them but because the public has not yet been introduced to such a new concept in the arts.
Meanwhile, painter Dao Minh Tri, former Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City Fine Art Association, confirmed that “because the public have not become acquainted with these new kinds of arts, both curators and artists need to have open mind. Therefore, this festival is good news for the development of installation art and performance art”.
In fact, to some degree, the Youth Fine Arts Festival in 2007 had already introduced new kinds of arts to viewers and created a change in the way these arts ar appreciated and enjoyed and this festival is a special occasion for young artists to perform/present their latest creative works.
Source: HNM
Translated by Nguyen Thao