Giang Quang Vinh’s tangle of beings
We welcome Giang Quang Vinh with clapping as he arrives hurriedly and fully loaded on the Ephra floor. We should call him Vinh, he says, and quickly adds that it is pronounced "Ving", as in the English word "moving". This not only seems to fit his name well, but also his nature: even when Vinh is simply sitting cross-legged on the floor – the position he chooses for our interview – his thoughts never seem to pause and sometimes run in different directions at the same time. Something inside him is always on the move.
Vinh is studying sculpture at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule in Berlin. What does that mean, sculpture? One of us knows: for example, when you carve something out of stone or marble with a chisel or a hammer to form something. That sounds right, Vinh confirms, but as he explains how he works, the term seems to encompass a lot more: For example, he enjoys experimenting with 3D printers, painting patterns on public spaces with soil, cooking Vietnamese noodle soups and telling stories to go with them, or making chocolate together with children and hanging artworks on trams with them. We can tell that Vinh loves working with children from his infectiously cheerful manner. But did he want to be an artist when he was a child himself? Vinh chuckles merrily. Actually, he says, he always wanted to be a balloon seller. He loved the vendors standing on the street with their floating bouquets. But his mum never wanted to buy him a balloon. So he thought that if he sold them himself, he could always have as many balloons as he wanted.
Slowly, Vinh's inner urge to move is transferred to us and after a short break we are allowed to get to work ourselves. In small groups, we draw collective funny bodies. It goes like this: one person draws a head, folds the paper so that the head is no longer visible and passes it on. The next person draws the upper body and so on. This creates bizarre creatures - for example, a pig with bear paws and fish fins, a crocodile-sheep-flamingo and many other figures that can hardly be described in words. Vinh then pulls small devices out of the large bag he has brought with him. He tells us that the black sticks are 3D pens that we can use to transform our drawings into three-dimensional works of art. After he has explained everything to us in detail, we are allowed to try out the pens ourselves – and create mini sculptures in bright colours, all without a hammer and chisel!
We are quite proud of our little figures and would love to take them home with us straight away. And who knows: maybe we'll meet someone on the way home who we'd like to give our tangled creatures to...
