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EXHIBITIONS

Truong Que Chi and Nguyen Phuong Linh: BREATHE

EXHIBITIONS

Truong Que Chi and Nguyen Phuong Linh: BREATHE

Ongoing
Type

Installation

Venue

Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area

Etoile Kaito Living Bldg.

1-15-15 Higashikanda, Chiyoda-ku

Date

10/17/2025 Fri. - 12/14 Sun.

11:30–18:00 (Fri until 19:00)
Closed on Mon and Tue
*Open Nov 3 (Nat’l hol.) and 24 (Subst. hol.).

Reference Image: Sourceless Waters: White. Shadow, 2024
Art Asian Biennale, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts; Image courtesy of the artist.

Nguyen Phuong Linh and Truong Que Chi have undertaken collaborative projects since 2021. Truong’s works delve into the spectacle of the everyday—its contrasting emotions and its enigmas. Nguyen’s practice contemplates form and time. Allusions to bodily movements in her recent works convey her long-standing fascination with the body, its durability, and its resilience.

 

BREATHE is their new collaboration, unfolding through two distinct yet interconnected bodies of work that respond to each other in material dialogue and corporeal investigation. The installation emerges like a living organism: a fabric surface printed with spongy red blocks flying and undulating; a rattan tree trunk spinning in circles as if dancing; a bicycle seat bouncing alone on a slender structure; a moving air tube striking sharply against a metal rod; and a mirror sprouting like a leaf, spinning like a carousel, reflecting a childhood photograph. A wooden goddess’s head rests on a mirrored tray, along with two old coats once belonging to their fathers.

 

The space operates as a mechanical body with autonomous circulation—surfaces and lines, like skin, like flesh, like veins, like hair. Heartbeat and lung rhythm, blood and air, bones and muscles. Each sculptural element contributes to a collective choreography, a meditation on a space with its own breathing pattern. Carrying the echoes of memory, the installation creates an interplay of stillness and motion, tenderness and violence, transformation and repetition, compression and release.

 

Support: The Japan Foundation Fellowship for Arts and Culture in Asia
Special Cooperation: Etoile Kaito & Co., Inc.
Technical Team: Nguyễn Như Bách, Nguyễn Thanh Long, Lê Quang Minh, Studio Articulate
Special thanks: Hộp Bookstore, Đỗ Thanh Lãng, Ba-bau AIR

Artists

Map

2 min walk from JR Sobu Line Bakurocho Sta. (Ex. 4)
6 min walk from Toei Shinjuku Line Bakuroyokoyama Sta. (Ex. A1)

  • Please note this is not the Etoile Kaito Product Department Building.

Related event

  • Symposium

Towards New Forms of Artistic Collaboration: An Experiment in Trans-Biennale

Globalization, transformations in information technology, and changes in artists’ practices are profoundly reshaping the nature of international art exhibitions. Exhibitions and art festivals are no longer confined by time and space; instead, they are becoming seamlessly interconnected across temporal and spatial boundaries. Collaborative practices between artists and curators now extend beyond the exhibition period, continuing even after the official schedule has ended and outside the exhibition venue. This symposium will explore new forms of collaboration among artists, collectives, exhibitions, and art festivals within this evolving context.   Panelists Binna Choi (curator, Hawai’i Triennial 2025; artistic director, Korean Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2026) Maria Svonni (artistic director, Luleåbiennalen and Verdde) Mechu Rapela (curator, Tenthaus Art Collective) Truong Que Chi and Nguyen Phuong Linh (artists; Nhà Sàn Collective) Masato Nakamura (artist; general producer, Tokyo Biennale 2025) Yoshitaka Mōri (sociologist; professor, Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts)   Panelists Profile Binna Choi Binna Choi is a South Korean curator whose practice interconnect art, the curatorial, and the (sovereign) commons based on politics of decolonisation, indigenous practice and epistemology, and institutional change and unlearning, She directed Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons in the Utrecht, the Netherlands over a decade where she curated projects such as Grand Domestic Revolution (2009–2012 with Maiko Tanaka and Yolande van der Heide), Site for Unlearning (Art Organization) (2014–2018 with Annette Krauss and the evolving Casco Team), Travelling Farm Museum of Forgotten Skills (2018–2022 with The Outsiders), next to a number of commissions and experimental collective works. Together with You Mi, she also maintains a study platform Unmapping Eurasia. Besides, Choi also served as a curator/co/artistic director for art festivals such as the 2025 Hawai‘i Triennial, the 2022 Singapore Biennale, and the 2016 Gwangju Biennale, and curates the Korean Pavilion of the 2026 Venice Biennale.  In the context of pedagogy, she served as the faculty for Dutch Art Institute over a decade and the guest professor for the Gwangju Biennial International Curator Course 2025. Since 2024, Choi also works as the supervisor for Doosan Curator Workshop.   Maria Svonni Maria Svonni is a curator based in Giron, Sápmi. Her work is organized around collaborations, utilizing site-specific methods to promote dialogue and long-term change. She is the artistic director of Luleåbiennalen, Scandinavia’s oldest art biennial, and founder and artistic director of Verdde, a nomadic art institution working for the inclusion of Sámi perspectives. Svonni was part of the team that formulated the artistic program in the winning application for Giron to become European Capital of Culture in 2029 and in 2018 she led the establishment of KiN, the first museum focused on contemporary art in the most northern parts of Sweden.   Mechu Rapela Mechu Rapela is a co-director of the Tenthaus Collective, dedicated to fostering artistic collaboration across cultures. With a Master’s in Art History from the University of Oslo, she is an art historian, producer, and curator with a practice in space making. Currently, she is curating a KORO (Art in Public Space) project in Oslo.   Truong Que Chi and Nguyen Phuong Linh Truong Que Chi (b.1987) and Nguyen Phuong Linh (b.1985) are artists whose long-standing friendship has developed into collaboration. Truong examines contradictions and memory within everyday life through video and installation, while Nguyen poetically explores bodily traces and resilience. Since 2021, they have created works together, bringing poetic tension to space through bodily perceptions. Their practice engages with intergenerational memories of loss and the materiality of women’s bodies. They have exhibited at the Busan Biennale and Asian Art Biennale, and are members of Hanoi’s artist-run space Nhà Sàn Collective.   Masato Nakamura Born in 1963 in Ōdate, Akita, he has led numerous urban and community-based art projects since the 1990s and founded the art collective Command N in 1997. In 2001, Nakamura exhibited at the 49th Venice Biennale (Japan Pavilion). In 2010, he established the public-oriented cultural facility Arts Chiyoda 3331, managing it until 2023. He serves as the overall director of the Tokyo Biennale (2021, 2023) and General Producer (2025). He has published multiple books and received the 2010 Arts Encouragement Prize and the 2018 Architectural Institute of Japan Cultural Award.   Yoshitaka Mōri Sociologist. Born 1963 in Nagasaki. Mōri is a professor at Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School of Global Arts. After graduating from Kyoto University, he worked for an advertisement company, and then earned a Ph.D. at Goldsmiths, University of London. His critical practice takes on themes involving contemporary culture and the organization of urban space, as well as social movements, with particular interest in contemporary art, music, and media. Written works include Sutoriito no shiso (Ideas behind street) (NHK Publishing, Inc.), Culture = Politics – New Cultural-Political Movements in the Age of Globalization (Getsuyosha Limited), and Popular Music and Capitalism (Serica Syobo, Inc.). He also served as editor for After Musicking (Geidai Press).  
Ended 10/18/2025 / Etoile Kaito Living Bldg.

Reference Image: Sourceless Waters: White. Shadows.
Installation view at Asian Art Biennial 2024, Taichung. Image courtesy of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.
Reference Image: Sourceless Waters: Whip & Knife, 2024.
Installation view at Busan Biennale 2024. Image courtesy of Busan Biennale Organizing Committee
Reference Image: A Mangrove apple tree, 2022.
Nhà Sàn Collective’s Bến project, Stadtmuseum, Documenta15, 2022. Image courtesy of the artists
Supported by The Japan Foundation
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Photo by Dat Vu & Jay Santiphap

Truong Que Chi and Nguyen Phuong Linh

Nguyen Phuong Linh (b. 1985) and Truong Que Chi (b. 1987) are longtime friends and colleagues. Nguyen’s practice contemplates form and time. Allusions to bodily movements in recent works convey her long-standing fascination with the body, its durability, and its resilience. As abstract renderings of social, historical, and autobiographical events and structures, Truong’s works delve into the spectacle of the everyday, its contrasting feelings, and its enigma.

Since 2021, the duo has undertaken collaborative projects as echoes of the synchronous rhythms of their lives that mirror one another. Their works, in juxtaposition, converse and conjure up a visceral sense of weight, height, and ephemerality. Among their shared interests are shadows of intergenerational loss and the corporeality associated with the female body in various aspects and contexts. Their works were presented at the Busan Biennale 2024 and the Asian Art Biennale 2024. They have been active as curatorial board members of Nha San Collective, an artist-run initiative in Hanoi, Vietnam since 2013.

Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area

Etoile Kaito Living Bldg.

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