Dinh Q. Lê was a respected Vietnamese artist whose photo-installations and videos captured the nation's collective consciousness and post-war memories.
Read MoreDinh Q. Lê was born in Ha-Tien Vietnam in 1968. He and his family immigrated to California, United States, when he was ten to escape the Khmer Rouge.
Lê attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he received a BA in Art Studio in 1989, followed by The School of Visual Arts in New York City for an MFA in Photography and Related Media in 1992.
Lê is best known for large-scale photo montages and videos that inquire into shifts in the Vietnamese psyche prompted by the Vietnam War. His work explores universal themes of loss and redemption, merging Eastern and Western cultures, as well as personal and fictional realities.
Representative of the artist's signature photo-weaving technique, said to pay homage to his aunt, a grass mat weaver, Lê's 'From Vietnam to Hollywood' series addresses the media's failure to faithfully represent the Vietnam War. Ghostly figures and abstracted landscapes emerge from a blend of archival photography, film stills from the likes of Apocalypse Now, and war documentary images.
'There is an urgent need for expressions of collective memory freed from restraint; many people are actively engaged in building these narratives—I chose to do so through art,' the artist has said.
Highlighting contradicting accounts between Western and Vietnamese perspectives on the war, the video installation The Farmers and the Helicopters (2006) included interviews with Vietnamese people who witnessed U.S. helicopters land in Vietnam, alongside staged footage from fictional Western films depicting their arrival.
Lê co-founded the Vietnam Foundation for the Arts (VNFA), based between Los Angeles and Ho Chi Minh City. The organisation supports Vietnamese artists and promotes artistic exchange between cultural workers from Vietnam and around the world.
With funding from VNFA, Lê and three other artists co-founded San Art, the first not-for-profit contemporary art space and reading room in Ho Chi Minh City. He was a member of the peer committee for Art Network Asia and a member of the Asia Society's international council.
Lê passed away in 2024 at the age of 56.
Lê has been the recipient of several awards, including The Prince Claus Fund Award (2010), Gunk Foundation Public Project Grant (1998), The Dupont Fellowship (1994), NEA Fellowship in Photography (1994), and The Aaron Siskind Fellowship (1992).
Lê's work has been exhibited all over the world, including Houston Center for Photography; Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies; Speed Art Museum, Kentucky; a major survey of his work A Tapestry of Memories: The Art of Dinh Q. Le was held at Bellevue Arts Museum, WA.
His work is in the collections of Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Portland Art Museum; The Bronx Museum, New York; and The Israel Museum, amongst others.
Text courtesy STPI - Creative Workshop & Gallery.
