"Contrapuntals" takes its title from music, where two or more independent melodic lines unfold simultaneously. Rather than merging into a single voice, each retains its own integrity, creating moments of harmony, tension, and dissonance.
The exhibition adopts this structure as a way of thinking about the conversation between the work of Intel Lastierre and Vy Ngo. Each artist approaches questions of history, power, and identity from a distinct perspective, generating meaning through proximity and difference. Rather than seeking resolution, "Contrapuntals" asks what becomes possible when distinct voices remain in conversation.
Lastierre's paintings draw viewers into fluid, flesh-like forms that hover between body and landscape, where layered surfaces and shifting contours evoke histories that resist fixed boundaries. Through these visceral compositions, she examines colonialism as an ongoing structure that continues to shape the modern world, with a particular focus on the Philippines and the United States.
Ngo's work likewise begins with close observation. Emerging from a recent journey through central Vietnam, her paintings and installations draw on fragments of architecture, historical imagery, and found materials to examine how successive occupations continue to shape the country's landscape and cultural identity. Her work considers mission civilisatrice, the French imperial doctrine that framed colonial rule as a civilizing project, exposing how architecture, language, education, and class reinforced imperial authority while masking violence and dispossession.
Together, Lastierre and Ngo approach empire not as a completed historical episode but as a living set of structures, stories, and material conditions that continue to shape everyday life.
The exhibition will remain on display through October 24.
"Contrapuntals" takes its title from music, where two or more independent melodic lines unfold simultaneously. Rather than merging into a single voice, each retains its own integrity, creating moments of harmony, tension, and dissonance.
The exhibition adopts this structure as a way of thinking about the conversation between the work of Intel Lastierre and Vy Ngo. Each artist approaches questions of history, power, and identity from a distinct perspective, generating meaning through proximity and difference. Rather than seeking resolution, "Contrapuntals" asks what becomes possible when distinct voices remain in conversation.
Lastierre's paintings draw viewers into fluid, flesh-like forms that hover between body and landscape, where layered surfaces and shifting contours evoke histories that resist fixed boundaries. Through these visceral compositions, she examines colonialism as an ongoing structure that continues to shape the modern world, with a particular focus on the Philippines and the United States.
Ngo's work likewise begins with close observation. Emerging from a recent journey through central Vietnam, her paintings and installations draw on fragments of architecture, historical imagery, and found materials to examine how successive occupations continue to shape the country's landscape and cultural identity. Her work considers mission civilisatrice, the French imperial doctrine that framed colonial rule as a civilizing project, exposing how architecture, language, education, and class reinforced imperial authority while masking violence and dispossession.
Together, Lastierre and Ngo approach empire not as a completed historical episode but as a living set of structures, stories, and material conditions that continue to shape everyday life.
The exhibition will remain on display through October 24.
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Admission is free.
