\u201cHo Chi Minh City is a woman\u2019s world,\u201d says curator \u0110\u1ed7 T\u01b0\u1eddng Linh, who co-founded the Hanoi-based Six Space in 2015 with the artist L\u00ea Giang. The city is home to many influential women: Qu\u1ef3nh Ph\u1ea1m, who in 2003 established Qu\u1ef3nh Gallery; the artist Sandrine Llouquet who runs Salon Saigon; Tr\u1ea7n Thanh H\u00e0 who heads up MOT Space; Thanh (Nu) Mai and Xu\u00e2n H\u1ea1 of the multidisciplinary Ch\u00e1o Downton; Tia Thu\u1ef7 Nguy\u1ec5n who in 2016 founded The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre where Zoe Butt is artistic director; and Arlette Qu\u1ef3nh-Anh Tr\u1ea7n, director of the Post Vidai collection.<\/p>\n
In Hanoi too, women are busy carving out their own niche and making spaces for art. In addition to Six Space, women-led initiatives include Hanoi Doclab, created in 2009 by the celebrated filmmaker Nguy\u1ec5n Trinh Thi to cultivate Vietnamese independent film and media artists; the Nh\u00e0 S\u00e0n Collective, which was co-founded in 2013 with the talented multimedia artist Nguy\u1ec5n Ph\u01b0\u01a1ng Linh, while in 2018 puppet artist and storyteller Linh Valerie Ph\u1ea1m set up the M\u1eaft Tr\u1ea7n Ensemble.<\/p>\n
How did we get here? T\u01b0\u1eddng Linh cites an earlier group of inspirational women as role models: \u201cIn the 1990s there were not that many local women artists and curators. But still, many people important in the scene were women. Most of the artists were men but the support system was all women.\u201d These legendary women include: Natalia Kraevskaia who founded Salon Natasha in 1990; the renowned art historian Nora Taylor who first visited Hanoi in the early 1990s; and Suzanne Lecht who opened Art Vietnam in 1991 and exhibited women painters like \u0110inh \u00dd Nhi and \u0110inh Th\u1ecb Th\u1eafm Poong, both of whom offered alternative images of women to L\u00ea Th\u1ecb L\u1ef1u\u2019s paintings of beautiful girls with long black hair, wearing a silk Ao Dai and holding a child.<\/p>\n
After nearly 30 years of challenging the status quo, women are both supporting the art scene and making internationally-acclaimed work. Multimedia artist Tiffany Chung (b. 1969) is particularly well known, with her delicate work on aspects of migration held by institutions like SFMOMA, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and M+. She is regular fixture at international art fairs, along with other Vietnamese diaspora artists, Thu V\u00e2n Tr\u1ea7n (b. 1979), who, with R\u00fcdiger Sch\u00f6ttle Gallery, exhibited\u00a0Penetrable<\/em>, 2019, an installation made with residues of rubber, at Art Basel Unlimited, and Oanh Phi Phi (b. 1979), whose beguiling lacquer works were showcased by Fost Gallery at Art Basel Hong Kong in March.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n HCMC-based Th\u1ea3o Nguy\u00ean Phan (b. 1987) is having a particularly strong impact. Following her 2016\u20132017 participation in the Rolex Mentor and Prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Arts Initiative with Joan Jonas, Phan won two prestigious awards in 2018: the Han Nefkens Foundation and the APB Foundation prizes. Additionally, she has joined forces with artist Tr\u01b0\u01a1ng C\u00f4ng T\u00f9ng and curator Arlette Qu\u1ef3nh-Anh Tr\u1ea7n to form Art Labor Collective, which with cross-disciplinary practices develops art projects to benefit the community. T\u01b0\u1eddng Linh reflects: \u201cOur generation had a lot more mobility than the previous one. Plus, now we have the voices of many more women artists and they are new and different voices. It\u2019s interesting. Many women are making artwork that is very conceptual and actually very political.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Certainly, the brave performances by critically-esteemed artist Ly Ho\u00e0ng Ly (b. 1975) regularly spark complex conversations about women\u2019s identity, empowerment and sexuality. She chooses personal themes that open up the often-veiled domestic sphere, like menstruation (in\u00a0Blood and Flowers<\/em>, 2007), housework and servitude (in\u00a0Monument of Roundtrays<\/em>, 2000)\u00a0<\/em>and the female body (in\u00a0Water<\/em>, 2000).<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Likewise, Himiko Nguy\u00ean (b. 1976), based in HCMC, addresses topics that are still somewhat taboo. For her ongoing series\u00a0Come Out II,\u00a0<\/em>2016-present, she encases nude portraits of various people (Vietnamese, Japanese, people from Europe, those who are lesbian, gay, men, women) into peephole boxes. It\u2019s a truly human work that draws out our vulnerabilities and commonalities, and is a neat metaphor for the way mainstream Vietnamese culture can hide homosexuality. As Himiko says, \u201cthese artworks are important because they can start conversations about gender and sexuality in a place where some things aren\u2019t openly discussed.\u201d<\/p>\n L\u00ea Hi\u1ec1n Minh (b. 1979) has been questioning traditional gender roles and female identity since 2004: \u201cWhat does it mean to be female? What does it mean to be a \u2018modern woman\u2019 in Vietnamese society?\u201d Her answers lie in sculptures that express the restrictiveness of interpreting \u2018femaleness\u2019 only in terms of reproductive biology.\u00a0H\u1ea1t\u00a0<\/em>(Balls),\u00a0<\/em>2004 revisited 2016, uses cascading plum-coloured balls of D\u00f3 paper to symbolise an overflowing male virility tonic. Accompanied by a Confucian phrase that translates to something like: \u201cA woman\u2019s greatest duty is to produce a son,\u201d the burgeoning balls exert a persistent pressure of male power. Likewise, in\u00a0S\u00e2u\u00a0<\/em>(Worms), 2007 revisited 2017, hair-like jute ropes tied together with\u00a0 \u2018worms\u2019 encircle a Venus-type figure with a particularly nauseating closeness.<\/p>\n But is there a way out? Minh says, \u201cThe only way a woman can be liberated from these constraints is to reject the idea of femaleness as a biological function and instead understand it as a spiritual expression of universal energy.\u201d This is no better communicated than in\u00a0Venus<\/em>\u00a0(2019) where a figure inspired by the Woman of Willendorf is handmade in D\u00f3 paper and encased in silver leaf, a shrine to women\u2019s strength, power and sensitivity. Similarly\u00a0Divine Feminine\u00a0<\/em>(2019), the public sculpture currently exhibited in Helsinki, shows the world an ancient Vietnamese feminine icon that places women at the centre of the spiritual experience.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not all women artists directly address feminist issues and some audiences confuse feminism with the feminine or label all women artists feminist, as explored by Joan Kee in her 2007 article\u00a0What Is Feminist About Contemporary Asian Women\u2019s Art?\u00a0<\/em>For many, it\u2019s a delicate balance between recognising ones\u2019 position as a women artist and not being labelled. Nonetheless many are eloquent about their role as women artists. \u201cI am not exactly a feminist artist, but still, there are many young women in Vietnam who are empowered now. We are not constrained by our bodies,\u201d says the Hanoi-based installation artist L\u00ea Giang (b. 1988), who was in the 2018 Forbes Vietnam \u201c30 Under 30\u201d list of rising stars.<\/p>\n L\u00ea Giang\u2019s most prominent artwork to date,\u00a0Vestige of a Land\u00a0<\/em>(Ph\u1ea3n Ni\u1ec7m), was exhibited by Vin Gallery (which was, incidentally, founded by another woman trailblazer, Shyevin S\u2019ng) at Art Central Hong Kong in March 2019.\u00a0Vestige of a Land<\/em>\u00a0replicates in plaster parts of a \u0111\u00ecnh (a Vietnamese communal house), and to make the work L\u00ea Giang adopted building techniques used by craftsmen nearly 300 hundred years ago. The delicacy of the carved plaster belies its unwieldy columns, \u201cthere\u2019s no limitation to what women can do. This is why I like to make big sculptures,\u201d she says, \u201cto prove it.\u201d<\/p>\n Similarly, the puppetry artist and storyteller Linh Valerie Ph\u1ea1m (b.1993) is hesitant to describe her artwork as feminist. For Pham, life as a woman artist is a process of self-negotiation. \u201cBeing a woman is so much a part of me as a person and as an artist,\u201d says the artist. While she does explore themes of femininity and female identity in her performances, she is conscious that her perspective on the world inevitably embodies a female gaze. \u201cI like to think about how I can live with the \u2018idea of woman\u2019 and the baggage that comes with it.\u201d Earlier this year, her M\u1eaft Tr\u1ea7n Ensemble was sponsored by FRIDA, the young feminist fund, to develop a project about gender equality. The main character in the performance is a young girl who has hopes and dreams for her future that go beyond the domestic space. Suggestive rather than didactic, this smart and thought-provoking piece invites the audience to share in her dreams.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/vygallery.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Oanh-Phi-Phi-Installation-at-Fost-Gallery_ABHK-e1565246422802.jpg\")
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