Tsai Ting Bang held an art talk on June 3 to mark the closing of his six-month stay in Việt Nam. Photo coutersy of MATCA

HÀ NỘI — An exhibition by Taiwanese – Vietnamese artist Tsai Ting Bang in Hà Nội displays intimate photographs taken over the years, portraying his mother through shifting business ventures and a variety of domestic spaces where the family once lived. 

Through Bang’s lens, his Vietnamese mother Trang is portrayed through diverse yet overlapping roles: businesswoman, wife, mother and fashionista.

“Our home constantly moved in pursuit of opportunity, and our family was perpetually fragmented and reassembled," Bang said.

“Sometimes we lived in luxury; other times, we all slept on floor mats. She believed that having a nice house is not as important as having the land it sat on; land increased in value faster.”

As a photographic subject, his mother is almost always camera-ready: well-dressed, charismatic and constantly in meetings to pivot toward new business ideas. Yet as a son, Bang thought these snap decisions led to an unstable family life.

After a period of separation due to personal circumstances, revisiting old photographs of his mother while accompanying her in the present has become his attempt to understand what has shaped the woman she is today.

Bang was born in 1999. After completing elementary school in Taiwan, he returned to Việt Nam due to family circumstances and left formal education at an early age.

From his teenage years onward, he pursued a self-directed path of learning while dedicating himself extensively to photography.

Over the years, he has developed a body of work centred on family, migration and social transformation, exploring the emotional dynamics of transnational lives. 

His photobooks have received several prestigious awards, including the First Photobook Award at the Paris Photo-Aperture Photobook Awards, the Singapore International Photography Festival Dummy Photobook Award and the Hasselblad Foundation Photobook Grant.

The exhibition runs until June 30 at Matca 48 Ngọc Hà Street in Hà Nội's Ba Đình Ward. — VNS