English | Tiếng Việt

A. Farm and Goethe Institut HCMC are pleased to invite you to Season 8 Open Studio, featuring works by our two funded artists Kaki (Leipzig, Germany) and Nguyễn Giao Xuân (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam).

Kaki’s project, “A tingling sensation under the skin”, takes soil as a point of departure to reflect on materiality, movement, and belonging across territories scarred by wartime contamination and urban development. Long present in her practice, soil is not only a ground for sustenance and cultivation but also a quiet witness to history and human activity, which could be violent and exploitative at times. In this new body of work, soil appears both in its raw state and as other apparitions reconfiguring the exhibition into a working laboratory where historical facts, scientific data, and speculative contradictions are set in motion.

In “The Burden of Becoming”, Nguyễn Giao Xuân harnesses the immediate, visceral encounter of charcoal on raw canvas to stage a dystopian reality in which humans attempt to dominate nature, elevating themselves above all else, only to suffer the consequences of their own making. Taken as a whole, the series is a sober inquiry into the contemporary condition, tracing a relentless cycle of domination, collapse, and reckoning—lives pressed under compounding pressures.

EVENT DETAILS

📅 Opening Reception: 19:00 – Thursday, 27 November, 202
♦️ Duration: 13:00 – 18:00, 28 & 29 November, 2025
📍 Venue: A. Farm Studios – 6/4 Nguyễn Đăng Giai, An Khánh
🛵 Parking at The Sentry P – 16 Nguyễn Đăng Giai, An Khánh

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Kaki

September — November 2025

Kaki is a research artist based in Leipzig, Germany. She studied at the HGB Leipzig and the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg. Her works deal with essential questions of political activism, nature and social coexistence from an ecofeminist perspective. Her handling of space unfolds as a complex interplay between form and substance. The working process and materials usually result from field studies or archives. Kaki’s works have been shown in various solo and group exhibitions among others in Austria, Georgia and Spain. She received residency stipends from various places, e.g. her last stay in Nairobi, Kenya.

Nguyễn Giao Xuân

September — November 2025

After obtaining a Degree in Painting from the Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts in 2015, Nguyen Giao Xuan began to work in branding communication design. It was during COVID-19 that prompted her to reflect on her own artistic practice and forced her to re-think about her future career. From then on, Nguyen Giao Xuan has focused on exploring and developing her research on painting, as well as her own practice. In 2023, her work “Parade Atmosphere” was shown alongside other colleagues under the Emerging Artist category exhibition of the inaugural UOB Painting of The Year competition. Since 2023, Nguyen Giao Xuan has been pursuing a Master of Fine Arts at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts.