Hà Ninh Pham: Fugitive Zone

My Land is a world-building project started in 2017 to today, Hà Ninh Pham invents a world that refuses affiliation to any existent place or culture. There, the artist creates complete infrastructures, operating systems, codified measurements, as well as a formal history.

To access this imaginary world of My Land, one of the "gates" is the [mothermap], an intermediary document recording the structure of this world. Similar to a chessboard, [mothermap] employs an 8x8 grid system, with the vertical axis ranging from 1 to 8 and the horizontal axis ranging from A to H. Each unit of space within these 64 units leads to different "lands," each characterized by distinct functions and infrastructure structures.

Adhering to those core principles, the "maps" exhibited in Fugitive Zone delineate units A2, B2, D4, and F4. These areas all belong to the Northern Hemisphere of the world that Hà Ninh constructs within My Land, originally planned in the early stages of the project to accommodate Western ideologies. As a means of resisting stereotypes imposed on Vietnamese art, the artist only uses “neutral” materials such as paper, charcoal, paint, ink, plastic (for 3D printing), etc., as a way to erase all traces of his identity and background.

With Fugitive Zone, the artist utilizes the existing structure of Galerie BAQ, comprising a ground floor and a basement, transforming the gallery into a place of total freedom inside of a meticulously manipulated zone. Half of the exhibition space is only observable through a screen, broadcasted directly from the security camera installed in the basement. For the artist, the transmitted images represent the boundary between the real and the imagined world. That flat screen is also the only pathway into a space where viewers can gauge actual depth, something that cannot be fathomed when looking at those maps of paradoxical terrains.

Accompanying the exhibition, as a key to delve into and decipher this world, the artist has written a set of “guidelines” called Fugitive Zone/substance, published in the form of a notebook/personal diary.

*Special thanks to A+ Works of Art, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for their support and collaboration on this project.