Bui Cong Khanh (Danang, b. 1972) is a Hoian-based Vietnamese artist whose visually and conceptually-sophisticated practice ponders social issues in Vietnam today. Khanh uses local Vietnamese materials such as ceramics, textile, and carved timber as covert clues to critical significance. His work is in major public collections in Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States.

The pair of vases, titled North and South, is Vietnam-specific, each naturalistically-painted with a similar fighting coq or chicken—a traditional sport popular throughout Vietnam. The vessel faces, in their depiction of similar Vietnamese fighting cocks, suggest the fratricidal nature of the American War. The back faces are respectively adorned with a Southern military jacket, and a Northern one. In his picturing of disposable, utilitarian, and interchangeable clothing to signify factional opposition, Khanh can be seen as querying the War’s ongoing dividing effect. In their installation to the altar’s right and left, formal symmetry, and iconographic cousinage, this pair elliptically speculates on the constructed nature of the North-South breach that has split the country for decades.