Connaissance des arts, numéro spécial photo 2014

The sensitive theorems of Mai Duong

Born in Limoges by a Spanish mother and a Vietnamese father. Bachelors in Mathematics at the Paris University VI
At the age of 23 she became a potrait painter for the magazine « Cinematographe ».
In 2001 the group exhibition of « Women travellers », reconstituted the family photo album for the Staley Wise gallery, New York.
2005:Children portraits in school aiming at reintegration of children and the young on the streets of the Ho Chi minh city Vietnam.
2006 : MOIS DE LA PHOTO PARIS . Women’s journey, men’s trouble. « Secret Diary ».
2007 : Group Exhibition « Artist book ». The Gallery at Geneva.
2013 : Group Exhibition « Naked » Cobler space, Geneva

Selected by the Connaissance des arts for the Zoom competition, for the photo fair in 2013, Mai Duong creates her images through faces and sceneries.

PHOTO : My son, in paris silver print on fiber paper 30 * 40cm

Mai Duong has forged her rich personality all the while practicing art of the photographic photo, and the fact that she began at the age of 10 years and did her postgraduation in mathematics. Her family orientations are soundly present in this diversity. She is born in France. Her mothe was an immigrant and her father came to France for his studies, as he wanted to run from the Vietnam war. In the quest for the painful history of her parents, Mai Duong leaves to discover Vietnam and produces Ex Saigon, a fictional family album playing on the unsaid as much on the strength of imagination. The assumed dual creates a foundation for all her photos. The photos cleary highlight the feebleness of the people and things in life with a never ending search of their identity all the while doing a synthesis between mathematics abstraction and the olden animists. This approach was able to convince Dior, Vuitton, Christofle, Baccarat, Hermes…They gave their carte blanche for translating the quintessential of the know how and their creativity while the Versailles Castle trusted her with their keys. Recently enough, in her personal series, the avoided image, Mai Duong associates through dream staging
of young Vietnamese living in France to the potraits of those Vietnamese who went through war. She mixes her art while revisiting, super imposing in their depths which is normally used to dissolve the painfulness of history. This work provokes an salutary electro shock as well being liberating. The past being as painful as it is, but will not destroy the thirst for the present.

Claude Postel

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