Exhibition «Nơi bóng tối thở» (Where Shadows Breathe)

   Women, animals, plants and hybrid beings share a world that ignores the rules of reality: Mơ Art Space on Hàng Trống Street opens the first solo exhibition by young artist Iris Sa. If you like painting that sits between dreams and magical realism, this one is worth an unhurried visit.

   «Nơi bóng tối thở» translates as «Where Shadows Breathe». Iris Sa (Phượng Nguyễn, born 1998) works in Hanoi, and her practice sits at the meeting point of magical realism, dreams and cosmological imagination. Through painting and ceramics she explores the self, memory, women's condition and the bond between people and nature.

   The show is curated by Đỗ Tường Linh, artistic director of Nguyen Wahed Gallery (New York, London) and of VCCA in Hanoi, and a member of the curatorial team of the 12th Berlin Biennale. In her text she sets Iris Sa's work beside two books about women's existence: Belgian writer Jacqueline Harpman's «I Who Have Never Known Men» (1995) and Egana Djabbarova's «My Dreadful Body». Where Harpman's women rebuild the meaning of existence from a historical void and Djabbarova treats the body as a territory written on by society, Iris Sa does something comparable in images, building a new world around those bodies.

   It is for followers of contemporary art by young women artists, for ceramics lovers and for anyone who enjoys seeing literature and painting in conversation.

   The exhibition is open Tuesday to Sunday. The organisers note that it is not suitable for children under 12, and children over 12 should come with a parent.

   Head down to the B3 floor on Hàng Trống and let the shadows in Iris Sa's paintings show you around.