Eric Minh Cuong Castaing
1979 (Seine-Saint-Denis)
Living in : Paris
Artist's webSite
Born in 1979 in Seine-Saint-Denis, of Vietnamese parents who fled communism and wanted to integrate into French society, Eric Minh Cuong Castaing lived a childhood bathed in the Vietnam War - or rather, in the documentation of the first media war, which he was lucky enough to escape. After graduating from the Gobelins image school in Paris, he worked for several years as a designer in animation, as a first assistant director. "I thought it was a way for me to be an artist. But, in animation, you're never just one element in a 500-person production line, and you have to respect an imposed format - like not putting your fingers in your mouth, for example." Needing to connect with communities, he first approached hip-hop, where he experienced the gaze of others as a minority Asian. "The assertion of a virility, a tone, a brutality did not fit me. My only way of existing has always been in the crossing, the collaboration, the hybridity. The foreigner has a status of naivety that joins that of the artist. At Gobelins, I was the one who stood in front of the mirror to dance. And in the 93, I was the boy who drew." Interested in choreographic writing in real time, he moves from manga to hip-hop, then to goal? and finally to contemporary dance.
Living in : Paris
Artist's webSite
Born in 1979 in Seine-Saint-Denis, of Vietnamese parents who fled communism and wanted to integrate into French society, Eric Minh Cuong Castaing lived a childhood bathed in the Vietnam War - or rather, in the documentation of the first media war, which he was lucky enough to escape. After graduating from the Gobelins image school in Paris, he worked for several years as a designer in animation, as a first assistant director. "I thought it was a way for me to be an artist. But, in animation, you're never just one element in a 500-person production line, and you have to respect an imposed format - like not putting your fingers in your mouth, for example." Needing to connect with communities, he first approached hip-hop, where he experienced the gaze of others as a minority Asian. "The assertion of a virility, a tone, a brutality did not fit me. My only way of existing has always been in the crossing, the collaboration, the hybridity. The foreigner has a status of naivety that joins that of the artist. At Gobelins, I was the one who stood in front of the mirror to dance. And in the 93, I was the boy who drew." Interested in choreographic writing in real time, he moves from manga to hip-hop, then to goal? and finally to contemporary dance.