KV Duong (b. 1980, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam) is an ethnically Chinese artist with a transnational background - born in Vietnam, raised in Canada, and now living and working in the UK. His work explores migration and cultural assimilation through personal and ancestral histories.
Duong’s paintings forgo more traditional materials of canvas or linen in favour of latex, which is poured onto wooden board or concrete floor, then dried, painted, stretched and resin-fibreglass coated on the reverse. As a medium, latex bears fetishistic and sensuous connotations, particularly in conversation with queer identity politics, evoking sexual fantasy and intimacy. Yet it is also connected with the rubber industry, referencing the history of rubber plantations under French colonial rule in Vietnam, which lasted from 1887 until 1954. As Duong foregrounds the materiality of his medium – his painting responding to the bubbles, surface impressions, films and ripples that form as latex dries – he asks us to consider the history of exploitation and extraction surrounding the Vietnamese rubber trade.
Duong’s compositions respond to real and imagined landscapes. Doorways, windows, and architectonic spaces honour the artist’s background as a structural engineer, and dreamlike natural landscapes are inspired by Vietnamese artist Vandy Rattana’s Bomb Ponds, bucolic images of lakes that emerged in the collateral of the US-Vietnam War from 1954 to 1975. Other series depict gestures of queer intimacy, in delicately rendered UV prints of embraces between loved ones, or the explosive movements of the artist’s own body against the latex in his performance practice. Across his work, Duong considers the borders and confines of space in relation to LGBT history, and the exclusionary toolset of nation building and empire.