[caption id="attachment_6224" align="alignright" width="142" caption=""connect:" at ifa Stuttgart"][/caption] The exhibition series "connect:" which runs from 24^th September till 31^st October 2010 at the ifa galleries in Stuttgart and Berlin presents national, regional or local art scenes that are currently outside the focus of  international attention where nonetheless exciting developments are taking place. The first exhibition in the series "connect:" at ifa, Stuttgart presents eleven positions by Vietnamese artists who deal with social phenomena in their works and who have made a major contribution to the emergence of a contemporary and relevant art scene in Vietnam. The selection focuses on Hanoi in the north and Ho Chi Minh City in the south of Vietnam. Until the early 1990s, artistic education focused exclusively on teaching traditional techniques and avoided the encounter with international, Western art. When the country opened up due to the economic boom, increasingly more information as well as lecturers entered the country, so that art forms common in the international contemporary art scene but until then unfamiliar in Vietnam, could develop.