''3 Million'' - Ryts Monet

The term “Cold War” is attributed to the British writer and journalist George Orwell, who first used it in an article published in Tribune in 1945, titled You and the Atom Bomb. In that text, Orwell described a world living under the shadow of nuclear threat. The term was later adopted to define the postwar period, an era of deep tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, characterized by ideological, economic, and diplomatic confrontation, in which the balance of nuclear terror prevented a direct military clash between the two opposing blocs.

However, this definition appears both narrow and Western-centric, as it fails to acknowledge the brutality of the numerous armed conflicts, revolutions, and coups d’état that swept across much of the world during the second half of the twentieth century. The two superpowers often clashed by proxy, supporting regimes, armed movements, and governments according to ideological alignment.

Among these, Southeast Asia became the stage for some of the most violent and ideologically charged confrontations. The Vietnam War — which lasted nearly twenty years — stands as one of the longest and bloodiest conflicts of the postwar era, with around three million casualties, two million of whom were civilians. After the Second World War and more than a century of European domination, the Vietnamese people sought to reunify the country under a communist government. The United States, determined to contain the spread of communism in Southeast Asia, intervened in what became a devastating war.

During the conflict, the U.S. military made extensive use of chemical and incendiary weapons such as Napalm and Agent Orange, with catastrophic consequences for both the population and the environment. At the war’s end, the American defeat left behind a heavy legacy: no reparations were ever paid, and an economic embargo stifled the growth of unified Vietnam for decades, leaving the scars of the conflict not only material but deeply inscribed in the nation’s collective memory.

Exactly fifty years after the end of the war, the author traveled to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, to the very place where the conflict ended with the surrender of the American army and the beginning of a new era for a nation unified after more than a century of Western occupation.

The project is inspired by an ancient Chinese ritual widespread throughout East Asia: the burning of Joss Paper, in which paper reproductions of material goods, such as money or everyday objects, are offered to the dead so that they may symbolically receive them in the afterlife. According to tradition, the souls of the deceased retain needs similar to those of earthly life, and money serves to pay the officials and administrators of the afterlife, ensuring a more favorable existence in the world of the dead.

In 3 Million, a young Vietnamese woman burns three million U.S. dollars, reproduced in Joss Paper $100 bills: one dollar for each Vietnamese victim of the war. The ritual act assumes both a commemorative and political significance: the fire recalls that of American incendiary bombs, while the money, beyond giving symbolic form to the victims, evokes the unpaid war debts owed by the United States to the victorious nation.

Today, in a world once again marked by mounting tensions, Asia has reemerged as a stage for what some call a “New Cold War”: on one side, a capitalist West that is increasingly conservative, isolationist, and fearful, erecting new commercial and cultural barriers; on the other, an East in the process of reinventing itself, seeking autonomous — at times progressive — paths toward a possible return of history.

___________

Enricomaria De Napoli (Ryts Monet), born in Bari in 1982, is a Vienna-based artist. He holds a BA in Visual Arts and an MA in Visual Communication from the University IUAV of Venice. Since 2022, he has been a member of the Vienna Secession and is represented by Michela Rizzo Gallery (Venice) and Barvinsky Gallery (Vienna). His work has been presented in numerous international institutions and biennales, including Palazzo Braschi and Fondazione La Quadriennale di Roma (IT), BIENALSUR (Argentina), Vienna Art Week (AT), Bucharest Biennale (RO), Fondazione Pistoletto Cittadellarte (IT), Steirischer Herbst (AT), Nakanojo Biennale (Japan), Kunsthaus Dresden (GER), Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (Russia), OFF Biennale Cairo (Egypt), Mediterranea 18 Young Artist Biennale (Albania), Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Tokyo Arts and Spaces (Japan).

___________

Artistic interventions are part of the Creative Europe project ''(In)Visible Traces. Artistic memories of the Cold War''. Funded by the EU. Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the EU or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the EU nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.