An Online Screening
14 December 2020 – 13 March 2021
Talk (in Spanish)
Thursday 17 December, 8pm
proyectoamil
Lima
proyectoamil is pleased to announce the online screening of The Colony, a film by renowned Vietnamese artist Dinh Q. Lê that was filmed in 2016, in the Chincha Islands located off the coast of Peru. Additionally, on December 17 we will host an online talk with three guests that will comment on various aspects of the piece: Luz María Bedoya, Gary Leggett & Mijail Mitrovic.
The Colony is the artist’s first film to diverge from the theme of the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Originally presented in the context of an installation, the film immerses the viewer in the rugged surroundings of the Chincha Islands, a group of islands off the Peruvian coast inhabited by colonies of seabirds, once the scene of the economic boom in the export of the guano fertilizer in the late 19th century. The visual narrative presented by Lê addresses three fundamental episodes in the violent history of these islands: from the wars between Spain and Peru and Chile in the 19th century; the tragic fate of Chinese workers in semi-slavery conditions on the islands; and the United States’ declaration of the Guano Islands Act in 1856, which authorized them to claim uninhabited Guano islands, cliffs, and atolls in the Pacific and Atlantic.
Thus, the work refers obliquely to the struggles of colonial powers for control of the exploitation of resources and the inhuman conditions that they entail. Through a scheme with multiple perspectives – from aerial filming, the use of drones or shots taken from boats – the alternation with videos of contemporary situations of exploitation of resources and workers, and the ominous soundtrack, Lê aims to evoke the presence of the workers who inhabited the buildings on the islands more than a century ago.
The Colony was commissioned by Artangel, Ikon, Birmingham, Han Nefkens H+F Collection, proyectoamil, Lima, with additional support from, Catherine Petitgas, Private Collection, New York, Shoshana Wayne Gallery. Produced by Artangel and TANQ Studios, this project was supported by Arts Council England, Artangel International Circle, Special Angels, Guardian Angels, and The Company of Angels.
In recent years the piece has been shown on multiple platforms and exhibitions like Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Artangel, London and more recently has been featured in Ecology After Nature: Industries, Communities, and Environmental Memory, a series of film shows and discussions presented online as part of e-flux Video & Film.
Dinh Q. Lê was born in Hà Tiên in South Vietnam in 1968. In the late 1970s, his family escaped by boat before finally settling in the United States where he finished his education. He is the co-founder of Sàn Art in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where he has resided for the last decade. In 2010 he was awarded the Prince Claus Award for his extraordinary contribution to cultural exchange. Lê’s work has been featured in many international group exhibitions including Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany (2012), the 2nd Singapore Biennale (2008), the Gwangju Biennale (2006), and the Venice Biennale (2003). He was the first Vietnamese artist to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) (2010). A large retrospective of the work of the artist titled Dinh Q. Lê: Memory for Tomorrow, was presented at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo in 2015.
Luz María Bedoya studied Linguistics and Literature at PUCP, Lima; She then studied Photography at the CEIF in Lima and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and is currently completing the Master’s program in Critical Theory at the 17 Instituto de Estudios Críticos in Mexico City. She was awarded a scholarship with artist stays at the International City of Arts in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in Ireland, the International Residence of Artists in Argentina, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria, and the Photography Foundation in Modena. Represented Peru at the 51st Venice Biennale and the 11th Sharjah Biennial. She is currently developing a project on music and navigation commissioned by MALI and Fundación Telefónica in Lima.
Gary Leggett is an architect, founder of JUNTA, and co-founder of Blindspot, an international design, and visualization company. He is a professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism and deputy director of the Center for Architecture and City Planning (CIAC) at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. His writing has appeared in Perspecta, New Geographies (Harvard), Ansible, Cabinet, AD, and Pidgin (Princeton), among other publications. He was a resident researcher at the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht between 2009-2010. He was part of the production team during the filming of The Colony.
Mijail Mitrovic is an art critic. He has a and master degree in anthropology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP). He is currently a teacher and coordinator of the Academic Area of Theory and Research at the Faculty of Art and Design of the PUCP. His publications include texts in various magazines, as well as Organizar el failed. Arte y política en la Carpeta Negra (Garúa Ediciones, 2016) and Extravíos de la forma: vanguardia, modernismo popular y arte contemporáneo en Lima desde los 60(Arquitectura PUCP Publicaciones, 2019). He has recently compiled the collection Lecturas sobre el proceso artístico en el Perú(2019), published by ENSABAP for its centennial.
