Residency

Confluence of Myths residency Open call

Tra Vinh, Vietnam
Deadline: August 9, 2026

About This Opportunity

This artist residency program invites art practitioners — including but not limited to artists, researchers, writers, and creators from other disciplines — to join a one-month period of surveying, researching, and creating works around a shared interest in the concepts and processes of myth-making in Trà Vinh, Vietnam. As a land inhabited by the Khmer, Chinese, and Kinh peoples, Trà Vinh — where the Mekong River meets the sea — evokes and awakens thoughts on its diverse cultural landscape. This intermix of cultures and local folk beliefs are woven into the rhythms of everyday life, stories and legends have been passed down and transformed across generations. The well-known myth of Bà Om Pond (Ao Bà Om) exists in multiple layers and versions. One oral tradition recounts a gender-based digging competition between Khmer men and women led by a clever woman named Bà Om to determine which gender would propose marriage. Other local variants attribute the pond's creation through supernatural interventions, mythical giants, or historical figures seeking a vital freshwater source for the community. This rich multi-narrative landscape directly inspires the Open Call theme "Confluence of Myths" by showing how a single physical space can hold multiple cultural, historical, and spiritual truths at once. It encapsulates how distinct cultural threads flow together, blending local wisdom, gender dynamics, and indigenous heritage into a shared geographic landscape. Through a broader lens, participants are encouraged to delve into fragments of narratives, legends, myths, and oral histories embedded in this land . Above all, they are invited to discover and examine how legends become a means of legitimizing events and phenomena from the supernatural — and how these, in turn, come to shape lived realities.

Restrictions

Emerging practitioners, writers with a focus on creative writing, applicants interested in research-driven methodologies

What's Offered

Housing Provided
Travel Support

Additional Resources

Accommodation, shared working space, local transportation, living stipend

Tags

environmentalgender studiessite-specificfeministinterdisciplinarydecolonialresearchindigenous

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