The installation 12 Percent – Giờ ăn đến rồi! commemorates the contract workers and their unborn children, our parents who suffered in silence under the degrading conditions of contract labour, and our lost brothers and sisters whose names we bear today.
After the end of the Vietnam War, the reconstruction of the country was supported by the ‘socialist brother states’ through labour agreements. Between 1980 and 1989, Viet- nam sent some 60,000 workers to the GDR and in return received 12 percent of each gross income as reconstruction aid. The living and working conditions of the workers were strictly regulated. Pregnancies were contractually forbidden and resulted in either deportation or abortion. Because of the economic and social differences between the GDR and Vietnam, women workers often felt compelled to have abortions. To this day, women in particular carry this trauma with them, as they were made invisible and receive little support in coming to terms with it. Contract labour is thus revealed as women’s individual, silent war, a continuation of the earlier war into the present.
Life and death, new hope, and continued suffering are themes of this artistic installation. (...)


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Fotos: Miji Ih