EVA 2: The Alien Self Opens in Hanoi, Staging AI as Both Collaborator and Question

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Structured Like an Algorithm

Spread across more than 860 square metres, the exhibition is deliberately built to mirror the stages an AI system moves through when it processes human data: Recognition, Classification, Encoding and Regeneration. Rather than a conventional thematic hang, the show functions as a kind of walkthrough — visitors move through the same sequence a machine-learning system would apply to a person's data, and are invited to reconsider, at each stage, how their own identity is formed, reflected and reshaped in the digital era.

Four young artists working across different creative disciplines contributed to the show: Nguyễn Trà Giang (known as Gydient), Võ Hải Yến (YenJii), Trần Đàm An (Antransax) and Nguyễn Phan Thảo Đan (Danestla), presenting work spanning painting, multimedia installation, image and sound.

Recognition: A Studio as a Starting Point

The first space in the sequence, Recognition, reconstructs the working studio of Gydient, a creative director based in Berlin. A desk, computer screens and creative reference material draw visitors into an environment where AI appears not as a threat but as a working collaborator — a system learning from how a person thinks, writes and creates in order to extend their working capacity. The installation raises a pointed question about independent thought and technological ownership at precisely the moment AI tools become embedded in everyday creative practice.

A Show About Responsible Use, Not Alarm

Under the title The Alien Self, the exhibition examines shifts in personal identity in an era of accelerating technology, at a point where the boundary between human, digital identity and artificial intelligence grows increasingly blurred. Through multimedia installation, image and sound, EVA 2 frames AI less as a threat to be resisted than as a tool that can meaningfully extend human capability — provided it is used consciously, responsibly and critically.

Speaking at the opening, Phạm Xuân Tài framed the exhibition's purpose in institutional terms: as digital technology and AI increasingly shape how culture is created, produced and accessed, new opportunities emerge alongside genuine questions of ethics and governance. He described the show as contributing to public understanding of AI's role in creativity, learning, research and business, and as a forum connecting experts, businesses, educators and cultural practitioners around these questions.

Part of a Wider UNESCO-Backed Programme

The exhibition is one component of a broader set of Hanoi Creative Design Festival 2026 activities addressing culture, ethics and creativity in AI use, with follow-on events planned around cultural governance, authorship and contemporary creative practice — an indication that Hanoi's cultural authorities are treating the AI-and-culture question as an ongoing policy conversation rather than a single showcase.

For a regional art scene increasingly engaging with AI-generated and AI-assisted practice, EVA 2 is a useful marker of how a state cultural body — working directly with UNESCO — is choosing to frame the technology publicly: not as spectacle, but as a subject requiring critical and ethical engagement from the artists and institutions working with it.