Confluence of myths residency
Open call

Tra Vinh, Vietnam

Application Deadline
August 9, 2026 (23:59 GMT+7)

OVERVIEW
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.

Keywords: Myth-making, oral history, euhemerism, make-believe

About the theme “Confluence of Myths”
Confluence of Myths utilizes the term "confluence" in its double meaning – both as the physical merging of rivers at Trà Vinh at the end of the Mekong stream and as the multicultural gathering of the Khmer, Hoa, and Kinh cultures. By elevating the idea of a physical meeting or gathering into this more concise term, the residency highlights a spatial, site-specific, and multicultural convergence. Ultimately, this approach treats time not as a linear history, but as a dynamic space entirely constructed by stories.

TARGETED APPLICANTS
The residency will select four art practitioners from the Lower Mekong Subregion:
Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand , Myanmar
The open call welcomes:

Emerging practitioners (regardless of age) whose practice and interest engage with the intersections of culture, history, and linguistics, and/or explores the nature of linguistic fragmentation, ruptures, and absences.
Writers with a focus on creative writing, allegorical narratives and critical fabulation.
Applicants interested in the process of making research-driven, experimental, or community-rooted methodologies.
Applicants who are able to communicate in English

BENEFITS
Selected artists will receive:

An artist and production fee of up to EUR 800
Fully funded round-trip travel from the artist's country of residence to Trà Vinh, Vietnam
Accommodation, shared working space (including a simple ceramic studio), local transportation in Trà Vinh, and a living stipend of EUR 200 per person
Curatorial and logistical support from a Vietnamese curator and local coordinator
A weekly programme featuring local experts, including talks, workshops, screenings, and guided tours
Opportunities to engage and collaborate closely with local communities in Trà Vinh
Connections with artists and cultural practitioners across Vietnam
An open studio presentation and the opportunity to exhibit or perform work as a collateral event of the No Cai Bum Art Festival in Trà Vinh and Bến Tre, Vietnam, with fully funded round-trip travel and accommodation for exhibition setup and participation in the Trà Vinh programme of the festival (approximately 25 December 2026–2 January 2027).

TIMELINE