HUONG DODINH

Early Years

Huong Dodinh was born in 1945 in Soc Trang, in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Her family fled the First Indochina War in 1953, settling in Paris, where Dodinh has lived and worked ever since. At a boarding school in Rambouillet, she witnessed snow for the first time, an experience she describes as her artistic ‘epiphany’ that continues to inspire her lifelong fascination with light and colour.

Dodinh studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1965 to 1969, training in engraving, lithography, fresco, painting, and architecture. The violence of the Vietnam War and the May 1968 uprisings in Paris deeply affected her, and after a three-year break, she returned to painting with a renewed sense of freedom. Dodinh has dedicated her life to art, cultivating a solitary, disciplined practice in her Paris studio.

Huong Dodinh Artworks

Dodinh’s art is defined by minimalist abstraction, clarity, and luminosity. Using mineral pigments and organic binders of her own preparation, she creates her paintings by carefully layering thin coats of handmade paint onto smooth, light-hued canvases featuring hand-drawn geometries. Dodinh’s technique draws from traditional Vietnamese lacquer and the marouflage adhesive method; her works are renowned for their subtle depth and radiant surfaces. She manages every step of her process, from preparing pigments to the repetitive, meditative application of paint, resulting in works that express silence, emotion, and the void.

Early Practice and Influences

Dodinh’s early paintings included figurative oils, such as Portrait de jeune fille (1988), before she shifted to abstraction in the late 1960s and 1970s. A formative trip back to Vietnam in 1993 inspired a series of works on paper mounted on wood, evoking memories of Ha Long Bay. Her minimalist approach aligns her with figures like Agnes Martin and Lee Ufan, while her meditative process and focus on light connect her to both Eastern and Western traditions.

Seminal Works and Series

• K.A. Series (ongoing): Abstract compositions marked by clarity, transparency, and density, created through a meditative process and repeated gestures.
• Ascension (2022, Museo Correr, Venice): Fourteen three-metre-high panels arranged in a triangle, installed during the Venice Biennale, surrounding the 15th-century Madonna della Misericordia sculpture.
• La Neige (1966): Pastel on paper capturing Dodinh’s first encounter with snow, a recurring motif in her exploration of light and transformation.

Select Awards and Accolades

• 1st Prize, International Grand Prize for Painting, Cannes (1981)
• Silver Cross of Merit and French Dedication (1996)
• Vice President, Maison de la Culture d’Asie Orientale (1997)

Exhibitions

Huong Dodinh has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions at leading galleries and institutions worldwide

Solo Exhibitions

• TRANSCENDENCE, Pace Gallery, New York (2024)
• VIE | VIDE, Pace Gallery, Seoul (2023)
• Ascension, Museo Correr, Venice (2022)
• À la conquête de la lumière, Musée national des arts asiatiques – Guimet, Paris (2021)
• Chapelle Saint-Léonard, Croissy-sur-Seine (2008)
• Grand Orient, Brussels (1999)

Group Exhibitions

• soft and weak like water, 14th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2023)
• Triptyque, Angers, France (2010)
• Philippe de Croix / Huong Dodinh, FRAC de Champagne-Ardenne, Reims (1994)
• Salon d’Octobre, Brives (1989)

Huong Dodinh FAQs

Ocula | 2025