Art on the Fringe: Vietnamese Painter Reflects on Rapid Change
by Bina Venkataraman on November 14, 2007 in Culture
The global economy has reached the lakeshores of Vietnam’s capital city of Hanoi – streetside shops rapidly replenish their DVD players while young hipsters send text messages using the latest cell phone models. Boutiques brandishing high fashions spring up overnight in the trendy Old Quarter and Hai Ba Trung districts.
Yet the streets of Hanoi still flood in the monsoon season, and residents tell of a giant turtle that swallowed a sword and lives at the bottom of Hoan Kiem Lake, the city’s central geographical feature. As Vietnam undertakes a wave of capitalist reforms as a fledgling World Trade Organization (WTO) member, many believe that this society, steeped in legend and tradition, will transform ever more rapidly.
From the perspective of a young painter living in Hanoi’s Tay Ho district, there are reasons to hold back the tide.
“The rich and the poor are getting more distant, and people are driven more by money than by any value,” Do Tuan Anh, 28, said on a recent visit to New York. “The changes are not good for our culture.”
But the new global interest in Vietnam also seems to be garnering attention for the young artist and others like him. Mr. Do recently saw his work go on display for the first time in the U.S. as part of an exhibit called “Vietnamese Modernism,” which opened October 30 at the Dr. M.T. Geoffrey Yeh Art Gallery in Queens, New York.
Mr. Do’s paintings – which range from hyper-realistic to abstract – portray the underbelly of competition, the struggles of daily life for the urban poor and the price that societies pay for their ambition and material success.
The same transitions fueling Mr. Do’s critiques may also be fostering his artistic freedom, however. “The Vietnamese government is letting artists express themselves more openly because of the idea of being a part of the WTO,” said Parvez Mohsin, director of the Yeh gallery and curator of the exhibition. “I think there’s a subtle modernist discourse happening here.”
Mr. Do works from his home studio in Hanoi, where boldly-colored paintings obfuscate the walls in all directions and angular metal sculptures litter the concrete floor. The 360-degree art enclosure makes a walk through here something like taking a ride on the carousel at Circus Circus, the Las Vegas casino.
Born a few years after what the Vietnamese call “The American War,” Mr. Do grew up in the verdant countryside of Thanh Hoa province. His family was part of an urban migration paralleled in the history of many developing nations over the past century.
It’s not Mr. Do’s nostalgia for a simpler, rural life that forms the subjects of his paintings, but an image of the present – its mutating, vibrant social realities and their effect on private lives.
One of Mr. Do’s pieces depicts disembodied hands, grasping and uprooting three abstract figures that are half-human and half-plant. Multiple stairways angle off in different directions in the background.
“There are so many choices, and so many paths you can take,” the artist said. “But they all just lead in circles.”
In Hanoi, where most art school graduates paint replicas of Klimts and Monets, or idyllic scenes of water buffalo and women in conical hats for Western tourists, Mr. Do’s work stands out.
“There aren’t a lot of artists making art for art’s sake [in Vietnam],” Mr Mohsin says.
Mr. Do’s work increasingly appeals to curators in his country and abroad. His paintings have appeared at the Museum of Fine Arts in Vietnam and in a national exhibition of art in 2005. He won the Juror’s Choice award in the annual ASEAN art exhibition in Bangkok in 2004 for an illustration-style painting in black and white that depicts the illegal drug trade – now one of his 12 works in the New York exhibit.
Many of Mr. Do’s paintings feature figures that are tortured or trapped in a metaphorical rat race. One piece from a series titled “Sensations” shows abstract legs reaching up the rungs of a ladder, the effect of which is chaotic and clumsy. “There are so many people trying to climb the social ladder that no one can rise,” he said.
Comments
Got something to say?
