Video-art exhibition «Hồn Thiên Nhiên» (The Soul of Nature)

   Nine frames at once on a wall-sized screen: forest, water, stones and people in painted masks. In Ho Chi Minh City you can watch it for free, inside a dim old workshop where the line between the image and the room itself almost disappears. Video art is rarely shown at this scale.

   «Hồn Thiên Nhiên», or The Soul of Nature, is the work of the twin-brother duo Lê Ngọc Thanh and Lê Đức Hải, better known as Le Brothers. They work with video and performance, returning again and again to the ties between a person and space, memory, culture and nature. Here that idea is split into nine simultaneous scenes: painted bodies, animal and human masks, streams and undergrowth. The figures read as part of the forest rather than as visitors to it.

   Video art does not follow the rules of cinema: there may be no script, no character and no ending, the image loops, stretches and shifts, and you assemble the meaning yourself. There is no screening time to catch, so you can walk in and out whenever you like.

   The venue does half the work. 1982 Studio is a large workshop with ceiling fans, peeling plaster and old patterned floor tiles; the screen stands in the middle of it, fed by a 4K laser projector brought in for this piece alone. Daylight reaches the room, and ordinary equipment would lose both the colour and the darker mid-tones.

   Come if you follow contemporary Vietnamese art, shoot video yourself, or simply enjoy slow images. Nothing to prepare, and no long wall texts to work through before you look.

   The piece runs inside Ồ Ạt Oh Art Festival 2026 under the theme Crossing Blue: six days, venues across the city, a group exhibition, a curated film programme, performances and studio visits. The film screenings carry a reservation fee and are booked in advance; this one is simply open.

   Note the two windows: the studio opens in the morning from 09:00 to 11:00 and in the afternoon from 14:00 to 17:00, and closes in between. Plan for one of the two, because midday is the one time you will find the door shut.

   Questions about the festival programme go to [email protected].

   Drop in on any remaining day of the festival. A work like this belongs on a wall at full height, not in someone else's description of it.