Ryts Monet. 3 Million
Daten
– das weisse hausBeschreibung
Exhibition and Round Table Discussion
About the Exhibition:
3 Million reflects on the legacy of the Cold War, shifting the focus toward Southeast Asia and, in particular, Vietnam — the setting of one of the longest and most devastating conflicts of the second half of the twentieth century, which claimed the lives of three million Vietnamese people.
Marking fifty years since the end of the war, the artist went to Ho Chi Minh City — formerly Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam — to the very place where the conflict concluded with the surrender of the American army and the unification of the country, after more than a century of Western occupation. From this experience emerged 3 Million (2025), a video documenting a performative action in which three million dollars in Joss Paper were burned in a funerary furnace on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City: one dollar for each victim of the war. The gesture echoes an ancient Chinese ritual and intertwines the memory of the war with a reflection on the historical and economic responsibilities of the West.
Accompanying the video, Currency for the Otherworld (2025) comprises a series of ten paper prints depicting visions of temples and banks of the afterlife, produced using the ashes of the incinerated banknotes.
Miao Yin (2025), a curtain composed of hundreds jade beads dedicated to the Jade Emperor — the supreme deity of the Taoist pantheon — and Nuvole / Clouds (2025), a site-specific intervention on the exhibition’s windows, transform the space into an environment of contemplation suspended between memory and spirituality.
3 Million invites viewers to reconsider the Cold War from a non-Western perspective, foregrounding how history continues to shape identities, memories, and political geographies. The exhibition further highlights how Asia — and Southeast Asia in particular — remains today a critical arena of geopolitical tension, both enduring and renewed, between East and West.
Context:
The exhibition 3 Million by Ryts Monet unfolds within the framework of the Creative Europe project (In)Visible Traces: Artistic Memories of the Cold War, produced by BLOCKFREI – Association for Culture and Communication in collaboration with DAS WEISSE HAUS and a network of European partners. The project was supported by the European Commission and engages artists, cultural workers, and researchers
in exploring the historical, political, social, and cultural dimensions of the Cold War, with a particular focus on forgotten or marginalized cultural heritage sites across Europe and beyond. Through artistic research, study visits, residencies, exhibitions, and public events, it seeks to revive these sites of memory and encourage reflection on how their legacies continue to shape our collective present. Following the study visit in Romania, Ryts Monet chose to expand his artistic research by turning to Southeast Asia, engaging with a different historical perspective on Cold War memo-
ries and exploring alternative geopolitical narratives. This experience inspired the development of the works presented in 3 Million, which continue his ongoing investigation into the relationship between ideology, power, and historical imagery. By revisiting the memory of the Cold War through a Southeast Asian lens, the exhibition broadens the project’s geographical and conceptual reach, emphasizing the interconnectedness of global histories and their enduring political, social, and spiritual resonances.
Public Program:
Round Table Discusssion Tracing the Cold War: Art, Heritage, and Memory
As part of the exhibition’s public program and within the framework of (In)Visible Traces: Artistic Memories of the Cold War, a Round Table Discussion will take place at DAS WEISSE HAUS on November 13,2025, 6 pm. The round table will feature artist Ryts Monet and art historian and critic Kathrin Heinrich. It will be moderated by Jana Dolečki and will begin with an introductory presentation of the project’s outcomes by its leader, Nevena Janković, both of whom are members of the BLOCKFREI Collective and part of the leadership of DAS WEISSE HAUS. The discussion will address the notion of sites of memory and artistic reflection, focusing on how to uncover, reinterpret, and reimagine the cultural heritage of Cold War sites through contemporary artistic practices. It will further explore how art can respond to and engage with the past and memory sites, and how creative practices can contribute to processes of remembrance and reinterpretation—activating new forms of dialogue between history, art, and contemporary society.