The representation of my artwork is usually a combination of video
installation, painting, drawings and sculptures
They are my reflections on the history of Vietnam
and also my observation on the poetry of daily life
I was initially trained as a painter but I am very interested in the idea of history
as fiction, the modern architecture movement in Vietnam and Cambodia
and also about the Mekong river and its relationship to folklore in this region
The Mekong river is one of the largest rivers in the world
and for me this river is so important in terms of culture, history and economy
In recent decades, from my observation, the river has been heavily impacted by environmental changes
natural and annual flooding in the Mekong delta brings a lot of nutrition and alluvium from the
river to nurture the land but in recent decades for agricultural development a very sophisticated
system of dykes are built in order to prevent flood water from coming inside the rice paddies
Over the years because the land cannot get natural water from the river it becomes polluted
by all of the chemicals and the pesticides that are heavily used for agricultural production
Art can have a significant impact on how we perceive the living environment
First Rain, Brise Soleil is my exploration on the relationship between Vietnam and Cambodia
The 'first rain' of the monsoon season begins the rice cultivation cycle
very important to us culturally
and 'brise soleil' on the other hand is a concrete structure with holes on them
I compared these two elements
the memory of a Vietnamese construction worker and also the destruction of one of the most
iconic modernist buildings in Phnom Penh the Bassac Theatre
and the second part of the video is based on a folktale about a love story
between a Vietnamese man and a Cambodian woman
I'm very interested in the idea between truth and fiction but growing up in Vietnam I feel like
the official history that I perceive or study in school is very manipulated
the literature that I receive is also very limited
I can easily access folk stories from the West but the folk traditions from
the neighboring countries are almost invisible so I kind of turned towards the idea of using
folklore and mythologies also fairy tales in order to kind of seeking for alternatives of truth
I don't really expect that the audience have to have all of the knowledge about the research
that I did in order to make the artwork
What is important for me and what has attracted me
to become an artist is the ability of the visual art to connect us
In my work No Jute Cloth for the Bones bodies interact with the jute in order to create
sound and this sound is somehow for me the lullaby for the lost life in the famine but the audience
doesn't have to know all of these things they can just enjoy and experience the environment
At the Fine Art University in Saigon I was trained as lacquer artist but I really like to use the
medium of silk because of its transparency so in Dream of March and August all of the paintings
are paired in diptychs and they are hung next to each other and they are put in a translucent frame
so you can walk around the paintings and see both the front and the back of the paintings
Mute Grain is a three-channel video installation in black and white and the video is my personal
exploration of the historic event of the famine in the Red River Delta of Vietnam during the
Japanese occupation which believed to cause the death of two million Vietnamese people
Because this particular event is not well recorded in standard history I was very curious and I wonder
why certain events in history are glorified, why other events are not mentioned at all
What I feel important is the beauty and the poetry of the artwork give a universal way of
being connected and overcome all of the historical trauma
Personally I think in Vietnam we like to think and talk about the future because we are very
optimistic and as a generation that was born after the reformation period and long after the
Vietnam War we think that the hardship was over but somehow personally as an artist I think it is
a dangerous optimism because with this optimism we kind of sacrifice nature, sacrifice the environment
and sacrifice heritage in order to seek for new ideas about consumerism or capitalism
I like to propose an alternative to progress and to modernity that is not destructive but it is
more like an embrace learned from the value of the past study in order to have sustainable future