"The Good Ole Times in the Colonies "
Art Vietnam Gallery, Hanoi (Viet Nam) November 16 to December 7, 2007
Vietnam ’s colonial days are not dead in artist Kristine McCarroll’s new exhibition in The Good Ole Times in the Colonies, in Hanoi this month. The exhibition is the result of the artist’s exploration of her own national identity as a French woman in the modern world.
By digitally remastering, resizing and applying coloured glazes, McCaroll manipulates old postcards to convey this sense of transient time and identity. With an added luminous and transparent quality, many of the pieces are also overwritten with text, reproducing the traditional practice of writing to loved ones on the front of the postcard.
To really get into the lens of her subject, Mccaroll says she imagined herself as a young, single, French officer sending news of the colonies back to friends and family in France. The effect is not oppressively serious, inviting both self-reflection and self-doubt from the viewer.
McCaroll first came to Vietnam in 1995 and instantly fell in love with its people and landscapes. She was also touched by a feeling of history slipping through her fingers as the country set its sights firmly on the path of development.
She says she determined to investigate the residual remains of the French colonial presence in Vietnam before it disappeared altogether.
