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Visions of Vietnam

VietNamNet Bridge - Born in Houston to Vietnamese parents, PhiPhi Oanh Nguyen has always been struck by the stark contrast between Vietnamese culture and Western values.
PhiPhi Oanh Nguyen In late 2004, she was awarded the Fulbright Student Grant which allowed her to travel to Vietnam for the first time where she began her exploration of traditional Vietnamese lacquer painting. The result of this research is her first one-person exhibition in Vietnam, Black Box.
“This body of work examines the themes of exploration and passage that have affected me directly on a personal level,” admits Nguyen.
Black Box delves into a rapidly-changing modern Vietnam through the time-honoured traditional medium of lacquer.
“To many people living in Vietnam, lacquer is nothing more than craft bowls, boxes and paintings sold to tourists,” she adds. “But in reality lacquer is a natural resin with mysterious and sensual characteristics with great potential for artistic exploration.”
The exhibition, to be held at the Hanoi Fine Arts Museum, presents 16 lacquer paintings sculpturally interpreted as large scale lacquer boxes. The cover of each vessel is a lacquer painting reflecting images of Hanoi that everyone living here – regardless of gender, race, class – would be familiar with.
The images reflect common or shared experiences – a clutter of plates upon a dinner mat or a side profile of a speeding motorbike – in present-day Vietnam but using a medium often reserved for lofty symbols and iconic images.
The results are striking, simultaneously idyllic yet commonplace; Black Box pushes the medium of lacquer beyond its current expressive dimensions.
“Even though I have chosen to stay close to its roots by painting utilitarian and common object in ‘figurative’ terms, I have tried to surpass the medium and the resulting objet d’art into greater heights of freedom and expressiveness,” says Nguyen. “In short, I wanted it to breathe more and flourish free from its traditional boundaries.”
It is the choice of lacquer which lends the pieces both their practical and conceptual significance. The fact that the resin is indigenous to North Vietnam means that the pieces are literally fed by both the soil and the environment of the country.
“The resin itself-for its organic quality and specific characteristics-demands a different type of artistic perception and creation, one that has no precedence in the West,” explains Nguyen. “The resin, in all its temporal and environmental attributes, naturally brought me to create this work.”
As though having a life of its own, the lacquer responds to the physical environment and humidity, which orchestrates the tones, textures, and final setting of the resin.
The sweltering humidity of Hanoi bestows tensile strength to the resin, conditions the character of the people of Hanoi, disfigures the walls of buildings, corrodes the electric poles, and decomposes fruit.
The paintings are images that occur in the exact same climate as their materials. Equally dynamic and unpredictable, the form and content of the pieces dance in a symbiotic metaphor in which nature and society concurrently embrace and destroy each other in a relentless process.
The result is a marriage of environment and art, form and content. A work physically formed by and conceptually reflecting Hanoi. The pieces essentially constitute ‘freeze-frame’ memories embedded in a network of layers blurring past and present.
Black Box is a stroll through memories of scenes so commonplace and recurring they are overlooked in our daily lives. Yet over time, the sum of these instants forms the structure for the collective impression of an experience: a place, a culture, a period in one’s life.
The bases of these large-scale boxes resemble treasure chests which act as vessels for these valuable mementos. The sixteen lacquered wooden boxes are arranged in a grid that allows the spectator to experience the space and the images by weaving through the boxes without any preordained direction.
About the artistPhiPhi Oanh Nguyen earned a bachelor of fine arts at Parsons School of Design. In 2005, she received a Fulbright scholarship to research the medium of Vietnamese lacquer. She has previously exhibited her work in France, the US and Nicaragua. Sponsored by the United States Embassy in Vietnam, this is her first one-person show in Vietnam.
(Source: Timeout

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