Large contemporary art center opens in Hanoi

At The Foliage exhibition, visitors can join in an art project called Wish Tree by Yoko Ono, according to VNN.

Conceived sometime in the early 1980s after the assassination of John Lennon, Ono’s multi-site project Wish Tree consists of installations of any number of trees native to the sites. Visitors to the installations are invited to write their wishes on small pieces of paper – known as "wish-tags" – and hang them onto the tree branches. The wish-tags are  collected by Ono, buried in capsules in and around her Imagine Peace Tower in Reykjavik, Iceland, which emanates a skyward light for two months every year, starting on John Lennon’s birthday, ending on each anniversary of his passing. A monument to his memories and legacy, Wish Tree is a celebration of life, love and unity. To date, the project has visited 19 different cities around the world, with something close to 1 million wishes collected for the Imagine Peace Tower.

The Wish Tree.

The Foliage – the first time the  Wish Tree has been presented in Việt Nam – lộc vừng trees have been chosen for the installation. Indigenous to Việt Nam and other Southeast Asian countries,  lộc vừng are most likely to be found in people’s houses and gardens, giving shade on sunny days, and also meant to bring good luck.

Alongside the Wish Tree,  The Foliage also displays several artworks by other artists.

Houston-born Vietnamese artist Phi Phi Oanh presents the Mappa Mundi – a painting created from Vietnamese lacquer and pigments on wood panel. Shaped by its various dichotomies and inversions – between East and West, the archaic and the high-tech, the cosmic and the terrestrial – the Mappa Mundi is Oanh’s large-scale depiction of a satellite image of Earth, suspended from the ceiling so as to invoke a similar sense of wonder and illusion exuded by classical European mural paintings.

The installation Cuoc song vuon dia dang (Living Together in Paradise) by Nguyen Manh Hung consists of vertically-stacked miniature housing units, each a highly-detailed replica of those found in Soviet-era apartment buildings of Hanoi– cramped, crowded living quarters, in one of which the artist spent the first 20 years of his life. Described by Hung as having the features of an open "village complex", the lone, Babel-like structure takes on a romantic otherworldliness against the painted vista of clouds and azure skies, standing in stark contrast to the modern high-rise landscape dominating Vietnam's 21st century urban reality.  

The sculpture Nguon (Originarium) by An Giang southern province-born sculptor Bui Hai Son is a giant kernel made of wood and copper and suspended in the air, floating above a verdant pasture. With its shape evoking the tale of Noah’s Ark, the sculpture takes on an added mythical layer, offering a graceful meditation on the wonders of the mundane.