A solo exhibition
Sparkling of Scallop Paper
Artist: Mifa | Duration: 08/03/2022 - 08/04/2022
Preface
Writer: Asheem Singh
“Điệp | Sparkling of scallop paper” is the debut solo exhibition from Mifa, a Da Nang-based visual artist and researcher who specialises in painting with acrylics on traditional diep paper, made from Do trees and scallop shells.
The playfulness and peace of childhood and the terrors of modernity find a unique intersection in her work, which applies ultra-modern paint and transfer techniques to beautiful and simple folk paper. The roots of diep-paper stretch deep into her ancestor’s folklore and are reinvented anew in the imagination of the millennial female artist, living at a moment of unique trauma and disjuncture in our shared history.
The newest series, “Under the scent of hidden foliage and rain”, was creating during the pandemic and showcases the delicate intimacy of Mifa’s technique, presenting simple images that resonate with the hum of nature, boundaried as if by a smart-phone screen, inspired by the changes that the pandemic brought, and that sense of being forced to look, as in the modernist frame, “at the familiar in an unfamiliar way”.
The accompanying “Poetry” series comprises paintings that speak to Mifa’s fascination, not only with visual arts, but with verse. Here the colour and cadence of discrete images combine as a whole series in a whimsical combination. As in the throng of modernity itself, Mifa’s work presents a kind of synaesthesia, where individual images interact with each other as compelling lyrical statements.
A series of Four Eastern culture themes that capture the artist’s own fascination with her culture and heritage: ‘5 centuries under water’, “A world of Dew”, “And seas and mountain know that I know”, and “Rubaiyat”. “5 centuries under water” is a child’s endless dream about tangible and intangible treasure with an interest for Vietnamese historical and folklore themes. It expresses carefree, instinctive yet meticulous aesthetism.
“A world of dew” expresses the love for Japanese’s haiku poems and the idea of embracing nature, capturing its essence with gentle eyes and describing it concisely. “And seas and mountains know that I know” is dedicated to the generous and romantic spirit of Expressionism in ancient Chinese painting’ philosophy and method of painting. And lastly “Rubaiyat” is the beginning of a dream weaving in Islamic tapestry.
In the installation "There is something about innocence one is never quite resigned to lose", a picture sits alongside a broken mirror in both a rejection of the past and an affirmation of it. As the scallop shells of Diep paper are redolent of Mifa’s childhood spent on Da Nang’s beautiful beaches, so the act of creation on paper made from those shells enables us to remake that childhood anew, and remake memory anew thereby, beyond the mirror’s cold, shattered light, rejecting the screens of modernity’s viewing devices in favour of our lived experienced. Thus we are aligned with the artist’s eye, seeing ourselves and our childhood but also ourselves as we are now, broken and imperfect but still alive.
The collection is rounded off by a series of paintings that speak to the leitmotif of Turbulence, inclining back towards the incredible traumas and changes of society, technology. We are presented with an artistic reimagination using the tools of her folk to document the horror of contemporary experience but also sooth it with the consolations of childhood. As with the exhibition as a whole, Mifa encourages us to consider the tumultuous present in light of the calm placidity of our shared history and innocence and, in an ever madding world, gain some kind of solace.
