Vietnamese American visible artist Dinh Q. Lê, who died in April on the age of 56, has left behind an infinite and influential legacy by means of his woven photographic tapestries probing private, cultural, and nationwide id pertaining to the post-war diaspora. Lê’s resounding influence on the Southeast Asian up to date arts sphere is obvious not solely in his observe, but additionally in his devotion to nurturing a group for promising younger Vietnamese artists all through his lifetime.
The highlight brightens on Lê subsequent month as Swann Public sale Galleries highlights one in every of his early-career tapestries in its upcoming LGBTQ+ Artwork, Materials Tradition and Historical past sale on August 22. In “Self Portrait #5 (Portraying a White God Sequence)” (1989), the artist interpolates himself right into a characteristically Western depiction of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, mirroring Jesus’s place on the cross such that their heads overlap — maybe heralding his fixation on Siamese twins later in his observe. As Lê recalled in a 2010 interview, his preliminary weavings “had been actually about me attempting to find my place in America, within the West.”
Dinh Q. Lê’s “Self Portrait #5,” defined Corey Serrant, the public sale specialist for the forthcoming Swann sale, “grapples with the artist’s non secular, cultural, and private identities.”
“The undercurrents of the work use the well-known imagery of the crucifixion of Christ to discover Lê’s relationship as an American immigrant from Vietnam and his queerness,” Serrant advised Hyperallergic.
Born within the southern Vietnamese city of Hà Tiên that borders Cambodia, Lê and his household fled the nation by boat in 1978 when he was 10 years outdated, as Khmer Rouge troops descended on the land. The artist, his mom, and his siblings spent a yr in refugee camps in Songkhla, Thailand, awaiting their utility approvals earlier than transferring to suburban Simi Valley, California, in 1979.
Lê struggled with English whereas attending highschool, main him to spend his lunch breaks Renaissance artwork books on the library. “My aunt had taught me to weave mats as a toddler, so I ended up actually weaving myself into these Italian and Flemish work that I used to be so enamored with,” he advised the Brooklyn Rail in 2010.
Lê acquired an undergraduate diploma in High-quality Arts from the College of California, Santa Barbara, and a graduate diploma in Images from the College of Visible Arts in New York Metropolis earlier than in the end deciding to return to Vietnam, settling in Ho Chi Minh Metropolis (Saigon) in 1996, two years after the USA embargo was lifted.
“After I was in America, I by no means actually slot in, and stored harbouring this romanticised picture of Vietnam,” Lê advised Singaporean media outlet Bakchormeeboy final yr, unpacking his experiences about displacement, assimilation, and selective recollections throughout the notions of belonging. “After I went again, it was utterly completely different from my reminiscence, however one way or the other deep down I knew it’s the place I’m purported to be.”
All through his profession, the artist actually interlaced Vietnamese historical past and tradition into moments of the current by means of his archival photographic and media-based weavings, in addition to sculptural installations and movie. Processing not solely his personal displacement and journey of return, however the numerous tales of different Vietnamese refugees who endured atrocities and had been compelled to go away all the pieces behind in an effort to survive, Lê’s meticulous artistry brings much-needed consideration and publicity to lesser-told histories.
Lê, a homosexual man, additionally stored his finger on the contemporaneity of Vietnamese social tradition because it advanced. He devoted a sequence of labor, Pores and skin on Pores and skin, to the nation’s subversive sexual revolution rooted in entry to grownup media by means of the web from the Nineteen Nineties by means of the 2000s. The artist wasn’t recognized for explicitly addressing queerness, romance, or eroticism in his artwork, however the method through which he juxtaposed fragmented recollections of the previous with the current connotes a rebel rising rhizomatically beneath the Western narrative’s crumbling floor layer. That is additionally emphasised in his dedication to the inventive way forward for Vietnam by means of the co-founding of Sàn Artwork — an incubator for up to date and experimental media in Ho Chi Minh Metropolis.
Woven effectively earlier than Lê gained reputation, “Self Portrait #5” marked the artist’s shift away from in search of belonging, as a substitute forcibly inserting himself and his tradition into areas that didn’t intend to incorporate him.
Serrant defined that after the artist’s return to Vietnam, “Lê’s sexual id takes an ancillary function to his Southeast Asian diasporic id because the metamorphosis that undoubtedly comes with uncovering a decision of the sexual self and historic reminiscence.”
“The merging of selves results in an expression of competition between Southeast Asian diasporic id and Western individuality,” he concluded.
This text, a part of a sequence targeted on LGBTQ+ artists and artwork actions, is supported by Swann Public sale Galleries. Swann’s upcoming sale “LGBTQ+ Artwork, Materials Tradition & Historical past,” that includes works and materials by Dinh Q. Lê, Concord Hammond, Tom of Finland, and plenty of extra will happen on August 22, 2024.