A profusion of little red balls overflows from a glass jar perched on a tall, black lacquer table, pooling on the cement floor below. In the next room, a massive Plexiglas cross rests against a wall; the former is inscribed with a poem and at its foot lies another poetry-etched piece of Plexiglas, placed upon a pile of sheepskins that are nailed to the floor. Together, these installations constitute “Hạt | Tim,” a two-woman show by Lê Hiền Minh and Cam Xanh at Dia Projects in Ho Chi Minh City—or unofficially yet affectionately referred to as “Saigon” by local residents—in which each artist presents an “altar” of sorts, inviting us to consider religion’s role in the reproduction of patriarchal social structures.

The title “Hạt | Tim,” is comprised of Vietnamese words that translate to English as “balls/heart,” evoking a juxtaposition of sexual and romantic love—or lust and spiritual purity. In the case of Hiền Minh’s installation Balls (2004), its connection to the exhibition title is quite literal, given that the piece consists of more than 20,000 balls of paper. The balls are made from traditional Vietnamese hand-made paper, dyed red using natural pigments. The work delivers an uncanny jolt when encountered in the front room of Dia’s sleek space, mostly due to the staggering number of balls, but also because the table that they are set on is one that is typically encountered in Vietnamese homes, and not gallery spaces. Such altar tables usually feature incense burners and photos of deceased elders, but for her work, the artist has supplanted these traditional items with a glass jar full of paper balls, as well as many others balls piled upon the altar’s surface and thousands more on the floor.

As the press release explains: “Hiền Minh’s ball-filled jar parodies the ‘ruou thuoc’ (medicinal liquor) jar commonly found in many Vietnamese males’ living room. Liquor made with animal parts like cobra’s heads or tiger testicles is traditionally believed to be a powerful organic Viagra for men.” By installing an over-abundance of phallocentric symbols in the place of highest reverence within the Vietnamese home, Hiền Minh hints at the ways in which certain traditional values may serve one gender at the expense of the other.

While Hạt is situated squarely within a traditionally Vietnamese milieu, Cam Xanh’s Tim, expressed through the work The Seven Capital Sins – The Perfect Love (2015–16), engages with Christian iconography, which makes a logical compliment to Hạt, since Catholicism is the second most popular religion in Vietnam. The most striking element of this installation is the Plexiglas cross embossed with poetry, which, despite its airy, transparent appearance, weighs more than 200 kilograms, achieving a sense of tension—between elements of minimalism and excess—that parallels that of Hiền Minh’s work. Another rectangular, tombstone-like Plexiglas piece is on the floor, a positioning that forces one to stoop down to read the poems inscribed on it, which causes the amusing effect of making viewers inadvertently kneel before the cross as if in genuflection.

Xanh’s Plexiglas tablet lies on a pile of sheepskins, which makes a nice cushion for the viewers’ knees, but the comforting vibe is undercut by the fact that the pelts are nailed to the floor, reminding one of the crucifixion. The inscribed poems recast the relationship between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene as an equal one between lovers, in which she does not succumb to his love any more than he does to hers. However, such sentiments are kept in check by a biblical quote painted on the back window of the gallery space, in which Mary Magdalene is reviled for her sins. In this manner Xanh suggests that, although men and women should be considered equal partners in love and sin, the dominant narrative of Christianity places the burden of guilt on the woman to protect the purity of its male savior—a historical injustice that helps to perpetuate sexual inequality to this day.

The exhibition “Hạt | Tim,” is on view at Dia Projects, Ho Chi Minh City, until June 20, 2016.

• Vietnam