DIGITISATION PROJECT

Salon Natasha | Vietnam

In 2010, AAA researchers began working with co-founder and curator of Salon Natasha, Natasha Kraevskaia, to compile and digitise the Salon Natasha archive, which documents the exhibitions and art projects organised and curated by the gallery from 1990 to 2005.

Established in 1990 by Russian emigrate Natasha Kraevskaia and her husband, the artist Vu Dan Tan and located in their home, Salon Natasha served as Vu Dan Tan's studio, a meeting place for artists and intellectuals, and a venue for young, experimental, and non-commercial art. In the early 1990s Salon Natasha was the only exhibiting space free from government supervision and open to the new spirit of artistic freedom and innovation. The many exhibitions and art projects curated and supported by Salon played a significant role in the popularisation of the new Vietnamese art in Vietnam and abroad.  

This project complements another AAA archiving project focusing on Blue Space Contemporary Arts Center in Ho Chi Minh City. The two digitisation projects will bring to light highly important resources on contemporary Vietnamese art in the 1990s, a critical era in the contemporary history of Vietnam after the implementation of Doi Moi (Renovation) policies in 1986, and reflect how artists responded to and reformed the State monopoly on the arts.

The digitisation phase of this project is scheduled for completion in mid-2012. AAA will start uploading the digitised material to its Collection Online in late 2012.