Founded in 1990, Salon Natasha was the home, studio, artist meeting and exhibition space created by the late Hanoi artist Vu Dan Tan (1946-2009) and his Russian born wife Natalia (Natasha) Kraevskaia (b.1952).
General view of Salon Natasha – early 2000s
Located in just 60 square meters of space at 30 Hang Bong Street, in the heart of the Vietnamese capital, for its first decade, Salon Natasha operated as the only venue for artistic experimentation in a city largely controlled by State-run cultural organizations. Supervised by the art historian Nora Taylor and curated by Natalia Kraevskaia, the archive contains 8300 files collected over 20 years of activity. It makes public a number of unknown documents and photographs related to the exhibitions and projects held in Salon Natasha or organized by Salon Natasha and/or by artists connected to Salon Natasha. The scanned documents include exhibition invitations and catalogues, artists’ CV’s and statements, project concept descriptions and correspondence between curators and artists, press and media reviews as well as digitalized images of the real artworks exhibited or collected by Salon Natasha, photographs of the exhibition openings or project progress development, snapshots of the physical space of Salon Natasha and its artists and friends.
Invitations to Salon Natasha exhibitions
The documents are presented chronologically by event. The event nature of the Salon activities is crucial because the space continually reinvented itself through its projects. Events include not just exhibitions in a conventional sense but also curatorial and creative projects in which artists were engaged. Documents include photographs of events, artists involved in each event, art works created for the events as well as texts, catalogue essays, correspondence between different parties and price lists. The documents reflect the spirit of Salon Natasha as a free, open, experimental and democratic space.
