Music & Art - Saigoneer

Exploring Vietnam’s Dynamic, Diverse Artist Residencies [Part One: Saigon and Đà Lạt]

2026-04-21T09:40:00+07:00

What is an artists-in-residence program? This simple question arose repeatedly when Saigoneer explained to friends and peers that we would spend three weeks traveling throughout Vietnam, visiting the nine local art residencies taking part in the GoSEA program.

While groups and activities similar to art residency programs emerged alongside art academies in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe, the concept solidified and gained popularity in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in the west. Broadly understood as an arrangement where a host institution provides an artist with time, space, and resources to pursue their work in a new environment, they have a range of aims, including supporting artists with professional development and the creation of new or ongoing work, as well as fostering cultural exchange and community enrichment. During our trip, we learned that residencies can prioritize and approach these goals in drastically different ways while catering to unique types of artists in diverse contexts.

Rare Sea: a central hub plugged into Saigon’s energy and history

“I've identified needs in the community and opportunities for exchange. And ultimately, although a gallery would be cool, having an arts organization made more sense,” explained Luke Schneider of the motivations to found Rare Sea with Nguyễn Trà My earlier this year. While Rare Sea has gallery space to hold exhibitions, it has room for much more. The organization hosts exhibitions, public programming, workshops, professional development events, and an international residency program in a classic tube house on Đặng Thị Nhu Street, just two blocks from the Fine Arts Museum.

"the forest lives as unfinished film reels" works, from left to right, by Aliansyah Caniago, Hoàng Vũ and Rab.

Saigoneer readers may be familiar with Rare Sea thanks to its first exhibition, ”the forest lives as unfinished film reels.” Once we’d passed through Aliansyah Caniago’s first-floor installation, which includes a haunting dwelling constructed with 35mm reels, and stopped on the second floor to see Rab's ink on silk maps depicting the dissaperance of tigers and listen to Hoàng Vũ’s soundscapes that incorporate the noise recorded during the construction of the building’s facade, the Rare Sea team showed us around the rest of the building, which includes shared studio space overlooking the city.

Rare Sea co-founder Luke Schneider.

“The studio space is not only where they [the artists in residence] practice making art, but also where they meet people and shape how they move around in the residency,” explained Lại Minh Ngọc, the residency’s coordinator. Movement is a key component of the Rare Sea residency program, as artists working across all mediums are expected to get out and engage with Saigon and its many layers of history, culture, and communities. “It's very important for them to have a starting point and then when they are done exploring, we have a space that they come back to and then reflect on their research and their practice,” she said.

"Rare Sea's studio space (left) and a portion of the second floor that can be used for additional studio space or for exhibitions and events.

Rare Sea’s strong connection with the local art scene and wealth of research knowledge enables the curatorial and technical teams to guide artists who are self-motivated and arrive with project goals that are open to the transformative influence of Saigon and its inhabitants. Rare Sea arranges field trips, studio visits, and events. While there are no expectations regarding final outcomes for residency, Rare Sea anticipates collaborative works, co-curated events, exhibitions, film screenings, readings, and workshops that reveal the invention, reflection, and discovery each artist underwent. The program emphasizes introducing international artists to Vietnam while raising the visibility and opportunities for Vietnamese artists. Such cross-cultural exchange, Luke explained, “can be quite beneficial for the artist in the sense that it's a stepping stone and a learning experience … that puts them in a position to then go on and do something else.”

Phố Bên Đồi achieves art through institutional collaboration in Đà Lạt

After visiting Rare Sea, we traded Saigon’s sprawling snarls of traffic and a vibrant international art scene typified by themes of departure and return, loss, recollection, and reinvention for Đà Lạt’s peaceful, pine-covered hills and somber, solitary vibe that calls to mind Khánh Ly’s romantic renditions of Trịnh Công Sơn songs. There, we met with Nguyễn Trung Hiền, the founder of Phố Bên Đồi Creative Studio. Having been born and raised in the city, he has watched with concern as it expands beyond its infrastructure limits at the expense of its small-town charm and inspiring serenity.

Greenhouses, farms and windmills comprise the outskirts of Đà Lạt

“Đà Lạt has long been known as a city of education, research, and leisure, with a cool climate year-round and a rich, diverse agricultural landscape. Its population includes migrants and indigenous communities, creating a culturally diverse environment,” Hiền explained. “Today, creativity has become central to Đà Lạt’s sustainable development, creating opportunities for artists and experts to come together and contribute to the city’s future.” This future, Hiền believes, can best be achieved through local and international partnerships. Since its founding ten years ago, Phố Bên Đồi has worked with the British Council, UNESCO, L'Institut français, and Goethe-Institut, as well as the city’s People’s Committee, and various corporate sponsors to create a wide range of public programs across music, visual arts, and architecture, including one of our most beloved public mural projects.

Nguyễn Như Bảo Khánh, Phố Bên Đồi’s manager, helps conduct a youth orchestra (left) and Phố Bên Đồi’s founder Nguyễn Trung Hiền (right)

Their recently launched artist residency program aligns well with Phố Bên Đồi’s goals and resources. They are situated in a more than 600-square-meter physical location that includes event and working spaces, studios, an art gallery, a live music venue, a ceramics workshop, a STEAM experience space, a library, and a cafe with an art shop. This gives artists who want to engage with the community opportunities to lead and participate in research, performances, discussion panels, workshops, and development programs with a particular emphasis on connecting with young people and university students. Because Đà Lạt was officially recognised by UNESCO as a Creative City in the field of music in 2023, Phố Bên Đồi is particularly interested in hosting musicians, music educators, and music researchers. Residency outcome goals are flexible, but collaboration is key. “When talking about the outcomes of a residency,” explained Phố Bên Đồi manager, Nguyễn Như Bảo Khánh, “what we value most is the connection between artists and the community. That is the core idea behind our motto, ‘Art Connects Us.’”

From left to right: Phố Bên Đồi's co-working space, a partnering ceramics studio, cafe, and multipurpose space.

Rigorous art achievement amidst Cù Rú’s creative chaos

Just down the road from Phố Bên Đồi stands its aesthetic opposite. Cù Rú occupies a former plot of agricultural land that has been repurposed as a bar, partially contained in an old greenhouse. Visitors are met with sensory overload as a cavalcade of oddities occupies every direction: paier-mâché head with glowing LED, single golden sandal, windchimes hanging from a broken fan, busts of military figures, traditional glass paintings, plastic bus station benches, stone statues, birds nest filled with ping pong balls, a disco ball transformed into a helmet, literary magazines, knockoff Disney toys, and countless paintings, sculptures and ceramics. Behind the bar are rows of jugs and bottles filled with rượu and local fruits and herbs. The back garden ungoverns itself into a tangle of weeds in the distance. Many know of Cù Rú, rightfully so, as a quirky bar essential for quixotic folk in search of acceptance and good times. It’s also home to a thriving artist residency program.

Art is always on display at Cù Rú as well as found objects and in-house distilled rượu. Works in the center by Karina Kristina titled MULTIFACED

Cù Rú opened in Saigon because members of the Sao La artist collective decided it was more fun to turn their apartment into a bar and invite friends over than it was to go out. “Cù Rú is a space where friends, artists, and people who love art can come to meet and have fun. It’s a place to find joy,” said Nguyễn Kim Tố Lan, a multidisciplinary artist and Sao La cofounder. The move to Đà Lạt in 2020 gave Cù Rú more space to host events and distill alcohols, while providing the Sao La Collective with additional space to create art and invite artists to join meaningful conversations while uncovering inspiration in the city's cultural, material, ecological, and social fabric.

At all hours of the day, Cù Rú exudes a calm, accepting vibe.

Artists from a wide range of disciplines, backgrounds, and goals typically work for a month or two in one of Cù Rú’s three private studios. Access to lacquer, ceramics, and wood-metal workshops allows them to experiment, exchange, and develop projects in the fresh air of a nature-oriented environment. Casual meetings with local artists and shared meals, as well as planned workshops, talks, and presentations, deepen their connections with the location and its communities. “The idea here is that during your stay, you don’t need to feel pressured to produce a finished work immediately. What you gain are new experiences and perspectives that are different from your home environment,” Lan summarized.

Artwork on display in one of the three studios by Nguyễn Kim Tố Lan (left) and Dương Văn Tốn (right).

Such a laid-back ethos and embrace of casual hours doesn’t mean Cù Rú isn’t rigorous, however. Canvas streaked with stunning acrylics, delicate ceramics comprised of carefully collected sediment samples, silk paintings, and mixed media works on display from past and current residents are testaments to the level of skill and dedication the space attracts. The works were bathed in shifting lights and splashed with music on the night of our visit. Lan sat on the floor for her first-ever DJ set as part of a scheduled music night. Guests danced, bartenders poured rượu cocktails with ingredients like fermented tobacco and mountain plum, and resident artists showed off their work to new friends in the background. The entire scene exemplified what Lan had told us earlier: “If artists come here with flexibility, a sense of humor, and an open mind, they will fit in well … This place is open to everyone, as long as you come with a friendly and positive spirit.”

Cù Rú and Sao La co-founder Nguyễn Kim Tố Lan is an artist across many genres including laquer, acrylic, ceramics, and in this case, live music.

The southern leg of Saigoneer’s exploration of Vietnam’s artist residencies revealed how diverse they can be in terms of vibes, resources and structure. Visiting residencies in the central area expands on these observations: part 2 coming soon.

How Richie Fawcett's Saigon Sketches Illuminate a Decade of Change

2026-04-06T12:00:00+07:00

It’s been hidden right there in the heart of Saigon for over half a decade.

On one end, neverending, city-wide construction is muffled and ironically forgotten thanks to a veil of sử quân tử flowers concealing its outdoor patio.

On the other end, there’s an open door, one flight of stairs up from an unmarked parking garage guarded by an elderly man, who was confused as to why I woke him from his late morning slumber.

The autograph-covered door into the studio.

“I’m here for Richie,” I say.

“Ahh, Richie, OK, OK,” he nods, reluctantly, motioning me to park outside on the sidewalk.

It’s here on the corner of Pasteur Street and Lý Tự Trọng where one will discover the art studio, speakeasy, and playground known as The Studio Saigon.

It’s also here where one will find Richie Fawcett, sitting on his uncomfortable-by-design DJ equipment box, hunched over his drafting board with black fingerless gloves and a scalpel, tending to his latest rendition of Saigon’s ephemeral skyline. I appear in the doorway, and he stands up immediately to greet me with a smile and a handshake.

Richie Fawcett has spent the last decade creating artworks of Saigon.

I’ve arranged the meeting to talk to Fawcett about his latest book: HCMC Decacity Project, a decade-long art project capturing the changing face of Hồ Chí Minh City from 2013 to 2023.

Archiving history via city sketches

To understand what this book is all about, first, realize that Fawcett is now on his fourth life. Life #1: Student of Egyptian Archaeology specializing in underwater ancient shipwreck photography at UCL. Life #2: Photographer of underground techno night clubs in London and videographer of extreme sports on cruise ships around the world. Life #3: Bartender under former James Bond, Sir Roger Moore KBE in London, and alongside celebrity chef Tony Singh in Edinburgh. Later in 2011, after a year-long stint in Hong Kong, Fawcett traveled south from one Pearl of the Orient to another: Saigon. He had originally only planned to scale up the city’s bar and restaurant scene. Yet, as fate would have it, it was here where his fourth life began.

Remnants of Life #3 live in the space amongst Vietnamese knick-knacks.

Back in The Studio Saigon, the 50-year-old artist from Norfolk, UK is seated to my right on one of his two brown leather sofas in the back bar area, with his latest book open on his lap. Although the book progresses chronologically, our conversation does not.

This book begins and ends in the same spot with the scene that inspired him over a decade ago to start drawing in Vietnam: the view from the top floor window of the Fine Arts Museum across the Quách Thị Trang Roundabout facing Bến Thành Market. Back in 2012–2013 or “the early days” as Fawcett titles them in the book, he starts with a trio of sketches of the Notre Dame Cathedral using pencil on A5 paper — beginning in a similar fashion as his grandfather did using charcoal as a self-taught artist back in the 1930s.

In his studio, Richie shares the story of how this all started.

Call it clairvoyance, a sixth sense, insider information, or just a stroke of luck — he foresaw demolition and felt inspiration. Envisioning the river of time flooding Saigon, Fawcett dove right into the bottom only to resurface a decade later to share his findings. The 150 pages in between recurring plot points feature original drawings of streetscapes, cityscapes, local characters, and panoramic views all captured in the last ten years.

Pens and papers — an artist's best friends.

Paper? French. Hand-made. Daler and Rowney. Aquafine texture. Purchased at a local student art shop.

Ink? Chinese. Preferably watered down from jet black to light grey. Same used by scribes during the Lunar New Year — a period of rejuvenation for Fawcett where the cooler weather clears the city’s sky evoking magical feelings whilst drawing.

Pens? Japanese. Mitsubishi. Somewhere between 0.1 and 0.5. If a pen is wrapped in green tape, it’s fresh. If it’s wrapped in yellow, it ain’t.

Signature stamp at the bottom right corner of all his sketches? Bought by his wife, Duyên, three years in advance. Obsessed with by his son, Harry. “My son loves to stamp everything with different dates,” Fawcett says. The logo — which you can find throughout his studio — symbolizes the shape of the city’s first citadel from back in the 18^th century.

Putting the Saigon skyline on the map

It’s almost unheard of that someone prefers to walk everywhere in Saigon, but for Fawcett, the long walks between lunch and dinner services when he used to work as a bar manager years ago became his muse. Repeatedly strolling along the same streets and around the same districts over and over has granted him the ability to notice not only details of new buildings going up into the sky, but also of old faces on the streets.

A snapshot in the story of Saigon.

“The most honest way is to draw something,” Fawcett says. “When you write a diary, words can be left open to interpretation, but drawing a picture, it’s a snapshot and that's why I wanted to draw what I see accurately. It tells a story chronologically in the right order about what really is going on.”

Over time, his drawings went from using only pencil to pencil plus pen. Then, it went to solely pen and soon to smaller and smaller pen tips and bigger and bigger canvases that require 100-plus hours for a single drawing, such as the one in the Brasserie VietNam in New York City or the mural outside of the British Consulate on Lê Duẩn Boulevard. Fawcett tells me that it had 24/7 armed guard for nearly a year. Meanwhile, his largest piece is a five-meter-wide inverted and LED-backlit drawing at Anan Saigon on Tôn Thất Đạm Street. Chef and owner Peter Cuong Franklin has been a close friend and supporter of Fawcett since they met many years ago.

While the artworks in the book are coffee table-appropriate, some of Richie's pieces could span entire walls.

Peter Ryder, the CEO of Indochina Capital, selected Fawcett to be one of the resident artists of Wink Hotels, effectively putting his work on the window shades of every single room in the hotel chain. “It’s a great match, Richie and I, Wink and Richie, because Wink looks to reflect the modern day Vietnam and Richie and his drawings are very much putting on paper his interpretation of Vietnam,” Ryder said.

An appreciation for the little things

When researching the last ten years of Fawcett’s life and work, I kept looking for the turning point in his story. In the process of documenting a decade of “decay and dazzling disorder,” as he writes in the book, when did things flip?

At what inflection point did the trajectory of his life as a self-taught artist change? Was it two years into drawing when he grew confident enough to finally only use a pen instead of a pencil? Or was it the 2015–2016 period, when the volume of his work dramatically increased? Perhaps, it was in 2018, when he quit his salaried job, got married, and committed to being an artist full-time on his terms, resulting in a visible influx in private commissions?

Maybe, it was throughout the 2020–2021 COVID-19 lockdowns when the subject of his work became more experimental and included drawing other cities like London and Santorini, sketching the insides of a tornado, or crafting portraits of his son — something he only does for himself.

Smiling from above.

After meeting Fawcett, visiting his studio, and speaking with others in his circle, I realized I had been looking at this situation wrong all along: HCMC Decacity Project isn’t just a decade-long art project as the title suggests. This is a decade-long anthology, a retrospective collection of love stories pouring out of Fawcett.

It's falling in love with the rooftops of HCMC, where he first saw the full spectrum of its contrasting elements. Falling in love again and again with the Quách Thị Trang Roundabout, even when he saw the statue’s removal taking place on his way home from one night, forcing him to quickly sit down on the curb under the streetlight and capture the moment in real time. Falling in love with his wife Duyên way back when she would pick him up on her motorbike in the early mornings during Tết and take him to Bình Tây Market — a place, as Fawcett writes, if you can’t find what you’re looking for there, “chances are it doesn’t exist.”

A quick sketch of Tết on the street.

And finally, it’s Fawcett falling in love with being a dad where at his studio he has a workbench set up — just like his dad working as a gunsmith when he was a kid — that way his son can now sit right next to his dad and see him first hand create and do what he loves every day.

“That is,” Fawcett says, slowing down and pausing between words, “the exact childhood that I want my son to have.”

Towards tomorrow

Regardless, for him, time ticking away has always been a motivational driver to get out there and make the most of it.

What’s Fawcett up to now? Will there be a fifth life ahead, and what could it entail? Branching out into fashion, launching NFT collections on the blockchain, and marching on his literal artistic race against time to archive the evanescent nature in Saigon? Regardless, for him, time ticking away has always been a motivational driver to get out there and make the most of it. “There’s no time like the present!” he reminds me over WhatsApp.

As Fawcett sits back down on his DJ equipment box with its red citadel logo and “Keep Calm and Make a Sketch” motto etched below and scoots forward to the table nearby an easel with his son’s drawing, he finally shares his overarching philosophy for this book and future plans ahead. It’s simple. “Best plan, no plan,” he says with a smile.

This article was originally published in 2023.

Water as a Metaphor for Trauma, Memories and Unspoken Histories in Quế’s Art

2026-03-30T14:58:42+07:00

Through installations and animated films, Quế traces the flow of water as they move through personal memories and collective histories, carrying generational trauma amidst urbanization, and even natural disaster.

Water exists everywhere: within our bodies, in rivers and oceans that surround us; it is often considered the essential source of life. Yet, when water is no longer calm and clear, and seeps into every single aspect of our existence, what kind of life remains now?

Originally from Đà Nẵng, artist and art producer Quế (Nguyễn Đức Hùng) once lived along the Nhiêu Lộc–Thị Nghè canal in Bình Thạnh district after he moved to Saigon for work. Observing and absorbing everything around him, he began to question how locals manage to sustain their life near the canal, which is well known for its severe pollution. His interest towards “water and what is found in water” led him to artistic practice of engaging with personal and collective memory and history, labor conditions and urbanization. Working across photography, moving images, animation and installation, his works have been developed and presented in art residencies such as Á Space (Hanoi), Leipzig International Art Program (Leipzig, Germany), A.Farm International Art Residency (Saigon), Artist-in-Residence Vietnam Network (Hanoi), and various exhibitions and screening events.

Portrait of Quế (Nguyễn Đức Hùng).

A fish tank, ‘Water permeates through the divine’ (2024), is filled halfway with water and glows in a darkened space. Developed during his residency at A.Farm International Art Residency (Saigon), the installation resembles what the artist describes as “a pixel of mud, water and anything that belongs to the river,” featuring mud collected from the Nhiêu Lộc–Thị Nghè canal. Inside the tank, particles slowly drift and separate under the aurora-like green light, where everything seems transparent and detached despite the polluted water. The work reveals a paradox of something beautiful, yet toxic — an isolated fish tank but without fish, where life cannot be sustained.

‘Water permeates through the divine,’ 2024. Glass tank, mud, water, and anything that belongs to the river, plexiglass, single-channel video.

In contrast, ‘Into purified water’ (2025) was developed as a part of his open studio during his residency at Leipzig International Art Program (Leipzig, Germany). This time, the water remains clear enough that one can view the video work of animated ants projected through the water against the wall, thanks to Germany’s trusted purified water system. Tracing the migration and labor histories of Vietnamese communities in Germany, combined with the artist’s observation on the rise of xenophobia and racism happening in Germany during his residency, a critical question emerges: at what cost would individuals or communities go in pursuit of “filtered” water in a distant promised land?

‘Into purified water,’ 2025. Single-channel video, glass tank, water. Running time: 3 mins 30 secs.

Quế’s interest in water goes beyond environmental conditions, turning towards the body as a site of inheritance. His experience living by the canal led him to question how children grow up in such environments, and why they fall ill easily, both physically and mentally. This returns to the artist’s personal upbringing, where he considers water in human bodies as a metaphor for transmission and inheritance: carrying life, memory, and familial memories. What is often understood as “heritage” passed down across generations, unfortunately, is inseparable from inherited traits and generational trauma.

‘Elles’ (2024) comprises a series of works that confronts one’s personal memories and inherited generational trauma. In a video installation, the artist himself lies still as the water drips steadily onto his head, until its weight intensifies and becomes unbearable over time. Resembling the image of his mother taking a siesta, the accumulating pressure and headache evokes physical and psychological pain that a woman goes through for many years. As the artist notes, “the stream of water is the violent impact of the man in the family,” and by placing himself in this position, he aims to “let the memory be implicitly voiced.” As the human body is largely composed of water, the materials in his works serve literally and metaphorically: as a carrier of traits passed from mother to child across generations and beyond, and as an imagined conduit where memory and trauma persists.

(Right) ‘Elles,’ 2024. Two-channel video installation, sound & scent installation.
(Left) ‘Elles,’ 2017 - 2022. Digital image.

Another highlight of Quế’s artistic practice is his animated films, in which he takes a deep dive into research on Vietnamese animation and propaganda posters. Instead of featuring human elements as main characters, he chooses a non-human approach: through the perspectives of mosquitoes and ants. While exploring the history of the house at No. 23 Châu Long Street (Hanoi), which survived through the Indochina wars, Quế attempted to interview locals living in the neighbourhood, but did not seem to get the answers he was looking for. At the same time, he found himself surrounded by mosquitoes near a canal. ‘Healthy diseases with water’ (2024) features a mosquito and the ghostly presence of a French monologue inside the house. One line in the film reads: “I forgot everything, the war made me the parent of so many children that I no longer remember, who don't even exist to see the sun.” It speaks to an extreme trauma and history that now seems almost nonexistent — something left unsaid, perhaps too overwhelming for one to fully comprehend.

Film stills of ‘Healthy diseases with water,’ 2024. Animated film. Duration: 7 minutes.

Meanwhile, ‘The ant and the rice grain’ (2026) takes direct reference from the original animated film of the same title Con kiến và hạt gạo by Nguyễn Thế Hội in 1976. The film follows a small ant on duty, reporting an approaching heavy storm to the colony, and ensuring that all others evacuate first before returning to the nest to carry his own rice grain. However, unlike the original version’s happy ending, the storm arrives and the flood sweeps away everything in its way. In the works’ description, Quế explained: “Throughout the process, my obsessions with water, storms and floods, hydroelectric dams, and dead bodies of ants floating in the kitchen sink and water containers at home emerged as reminders of the misfortunes endured by Vietnamese people.”

Film stills of ‘The ant and the rice grain,’ 2026. Animated film. Duration: 10 minutes.

Installation view of ‘Water, Ant, and Rice Grain’ (2026) in collaboration with Huế as part of the Solo Marathon 2025 program at Á Space (Hà Nội).

Mosquitoes are known as disease transmitters in stagnant water, and the mosquito “exploding” and collapsing at the end of the film signifies the helplessness and the weight of trauma carried throughout history. Meanwhile, ants are considered extremely hard-working even under dangerous conditions, yet they can be swept away by a forceful flow of water, in a situation where evacuation or migration remains impossible. The film recalls the disastrous 2025 Central and Northern Vietnam flood and how the situation was poorly handled, which took place at the same time Quế was making the work. Both films employ non-human elements of mosquitoes and ants as the main imagery, pointing to natural causes that are largely shaped by human-made factors. One film dwells on the forgotten histories of a house that survived through wars, the other one reflects on the vulnerable and collective struggles against environmental catastrophe today.

Open studio ‘Nature on the roof’ (2024) in Hà Nội, in collaboration with Saya Nguyễn. Organized by Artist-in-Residence Vietnam Network (AiRViNe).

Water embodies adaptability, resilience, and fluidity, and yet, it can be violent and carry everything in its path. In Quế’s works, what appears as personal and collective memories of generational trauma and urbanized living environment are deeply intertwined with bigger structural conditions shaped by inequality and social mobility: who gets to migrate and access “purified” water, and who is unfortunately left behind amidst disaster. No longer just “a source of life,” water links heritage, human well-being, and environmental instability together, revealing power dynamics along with slow violence, and questions how we can sustain our own vulnerable lives while navigating cultural norms and changing landscapes today.

Photos courtesy of Quế (Nguyễn Đức Hùng).

The Facetious Gender Politics of Gỗ Lim, Hanoi's Feminist Post-Punk Quintet

2026-03-16T10:00:00+07:00

In an example of cruel irony, October 20 is when we celebrate annual Vietnam Women's Day, and also the anniversary of the passing of Mai Nga (commonly known as Nga Nhí), the lead singer of Gỗ Lim — a Hanoi-based female post-punk band that, albeit short-lived, struck a blow for women’s representation in rock and metal music in Vietnam in 2011 and 2012.

It was only until a few days after Nga Nhí's death in 2012 that I first started listening to Gỗ Lim’s music, despite having been a fan of the underground rock and metal music scene for quite awhile. Every rock concert I went to at the time consisted of crowds of men in black band T-shirts headbanging to similarly attired and gendered musicians.

My first impression of Gỗ Lim was on a YouTube thumbnail showing Nga Nhí in a pink tee on the stage of CAMA (Club for the Appreciation of Music and Art) Festival. It immediately disrupted my visual perception of the genre. I wish I had a more interesting story to tell about the first Gỗ Lim song I ever heard, but I'm sure it was the one that comes up first in YouTube's algorithm-driven search results, their most popular, ‘Các bạn đứng nghiêm.’ The song takes the perspective of a giám thị (school disciplinary master), throwing orders at students to make them stay in line, not to move, and not to laugh.

‘Các bạn đứng nghiêm’ is a song at conflict with itself. The funky bassline, heavy guitar riffs, and drums instruct you to dance, while Nga's scream instructs you not to. The song struck a chord with any Vietnamese person who ever attended public school and likely had their own giám thị encounter. Its playful proposition produced laughter, which was at the heart of Gỗ Lim's subversive power.

Nga Nhí on the stage of CAMA Festival. Photo by Lizo Glennard.

The band originally formed as Golem, and had an alternative rock sound and identity. They performed covers of ‘Zombie’ and ‘Animal Instinct’ by The Cranberries, as well as some original songs.

Nga Nhí joined the band in 2011 and Golem become Gỗ Lim. The full lineup consisted of Nga Nhí on vocals, Trang Chuối and La Sim on guitar, Nghĩa Bờm on percussion, and Hà My on bass. They described themselves as “punk pussies and beard,” with the “beard” referring to the band's lone male Nghĩa, Nga’s brother. Their style evolved too: the sounds became heavier and edgier as influenced by punk rock and riot grrrl, while the lyrics became more casual and playful. Gỗ Lim’s only album, “Gái Làng” (Village Girl), was released in October 2015 as a tribute to Nga Nhí.

Describing their music in an interview, the band noted: “There are no restriction in terms of what topic goes into our songs, we talk about what we’ve seen and want to express: from school kids having to stay in line to girls doing their hair, even a cat, our favorite pet, being hungry, gets a song. Our music is open-minded, easy-going, oftentimes very grungy because we play what we like to play. We believe in the freedom of individual’s expression.”

Photos via Gỗ Lim's Facebook page.

Gỗ Lim’s performances expanded from local gigs in Hanoi music venues like Hanoi Rock City to international events. In March 2012, Gỗ Lim opened for MEN, a radical art project that featured JD Samson and Johanna Fateman, two legendary gender-smashing icons best known for their involvement with Le Tigre, one of the pioneer punk band of the riot grrrl movement. Later that year, they played CAMA Festival alongside Chinese indie sensation Carsick Cars, Japanese punk rock band Electric Eel Shock, and Philippines’s electronic rock pioneer Turbo Goth.

While the messages of many riot grrrl bands are in-your-face, straightforward and hard-hitting, Gỗ Lim’s lyrics take a more ambiguous, humorous, and playful approach, while still keeping the genre's defiant spirit intact. This quality reflects many feminist and queer scholars theories about the subversive potential of humor and serious play. Philosopher Judith Butler contended in her preface for Gender Trouble that “laughter in the face of serious categories is indispensable for feminism.” Playful acts serving a cause work as powerful tools to denaturalize norms, thus inviting alternatives and open-mindedness.

Take the first two sentences from ‘Các bạn đứng nghiêm’:

Kìa em bé gái, kìa em bé trai, em đứng sang phải, em đứng sang trái! Mau lên! / Này em bé trái, này em bé gai, em rơi trong rọ, em rơi trong rọ rồi. Em ơi!

Hey little girl, hey little boy, move to the right, move to the left! Quick! / Hey little left, hey little spike, you fell into the trap, you fell into the trap, hey you!

In the first sentence, two pairs of binary gái / trai (girl / boy), and phải / trái (right / left) are used. Then, in the second sentence, using spoonerism, gái / trai becomes trái / gai (left / spike), which is no longer a dichotomy, and when put beside em bé (kid), makes absolutely no sense. This toying with pairs directly questions the legitimacy of binary gender classifications.

Gỗ Lim's wrestling with stereotypical gender notions can also be spotted in ‘Người đàn bà làm đầu’ (The Woman Does Her Hair), which starts off with a list of nouns and adjectives depicting women's hairstyles. The lyrics' female figures have hairdos that are not traditionally seen as feminine such as húi cua (crew cut), dreadlocks, siêu hói (super bald), nát xơ (crushed and dry), uốn hôi (stinky).

Dissecting Gỗ Lim’s lyrics is a fascinating exercise. The band blends extensive malapropisms, alliterations, and onomatopoeia with creative wordplay. The band often sprinkles in their own invented phrases as well. For example, the chorus of ‘Người đàn bà làm đầu' is a rapid-fire string of phrases formed by rearranging the titles five words. The result is phrases like người đàn bà làm tình (the woman make love), người làm tình đàn bà (those who make love to the woman), and người làm tình cụt đầu (others make love without their head).

Art enthusiasts might interpret Gỗ Lim's small acts of defiance against language as a nod to Dadaism. The anti-art art movement first started in 20^th century Europe, and one of its core premises was to abolish reason and logic to strike against the rationalizations of modern capitalist society. Dadaists opt for a nonsensical and irrational approach in their work; even the word “dada” itself means nothing. In the words of the poet Tristan Tzara, which excellently captures the heart of Gỗ Lim's music: “Freedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE.”

This article was first published in 2018.

Review: 'New Wave' Documentary Is a Surprisingly Personal Dissection of 1980s Nostalgia

2026-02-23T10:00:00+07:00

Melodic synth-lines and steady electronic drums. Today, the signature sounds of new wave music feel perhaps a bit old and outdated. During its high point during the 1980s, however, new wave was hailed as music of the future.

Vietnamese new wave, or new wave for short, is a genre of music that can be best described as Vietnamese American eurodisco. Characterized by a blend of synth pop and disco beats, the music most often covers famous eurodisco hits from abroad. In fact, the term new wave had originally been a bit of a misnomer. The name stuck around when eurodisco music, especially in its burgeoning phases, was miscategorized under the label of UK New Wave in record shops across Little Saigon.

As Elizabeth Ai describes in her book New Wave: Rebellion and Reinvention in the Vietnamese Diaspora that accompanied the release of her documentary film, new wave “electrified” a whole generation of Vietnamese American teenagers during the 1980s. Specifically, new wave was revered by the so-called “1.5 generation,” referring to the generation of Vietnamese American refugees who were born in Vietnam but grew up and came of age in the US. For the 1.5 generation — lost trying to navigate a new life between America and Vietnam, neither to which they felt like they wholly belonged — new wave offered a new way of life. It was a way of rebelling and reinventing against and of expectations and identity categories of what it meant to be Vietnamese, Americans, refugees: seeking refuge from war, yes, but also from the refugee experience itself.

New wave embodies the broad-minded, quixotic, and highly individualistic spirits that guided youths from the 1980s.

Unfortunately, the popularity of new wave is now largely subdued. But those who experienced new wave during its height seem to be unable to forget the excitement, fervor, and zeal that it incited within the Vietnamese diaspora.

About the film

The documentary New Wave is directed by Elizabeth Ai, a Chinese Vietnamese American Emmy-winning producer and filmmaker. It was originally released in 2024, and has so far only been available for watching through screenings. Good news for us, starting late spring of this year, the documentary will be available for the public. Ai’s team recommended following socials for details to be released in the near future.

Interestingly, while the film project began in 2018, initially with research and outreach work and eventually moving onto filmwork, with the COVID-19 pandemic, filming unexpectedly came to an abrupt halt. While filming was on hiatus, Ai’s team started an Instagram page to crowdsource archival material. Saigoneer featured the project during this phase back in 2022, read our previous article here. Now, the instagram page has been taken over with promotional content for the film, but the montage of crowdsourced photos, depicting Vietnamese American youth during the 1980s and their stories, still remains available for public view.

The poster of New Wave the documentary.

As it should be obvious by now, new wave and its history is the central topic of Ai’s film: the origins of the music, the story of its rise in popularity amongst the Vietnamese diaspora, the ascent of its poster child Lynda Trang Đài into stardom, as well as its punk subculture scene: edgy clothes, electric hair, and late night dancing and partying. In describing her childhood memories of her aunts and uncles listening to new wave music, Ai captured the subculture of new wave succinctly.

There was this DIY, scrappy aesthetic that revolved around the music they were listening to. I think the beautiful part of it is that it's a hybrid culture they created; the youth who lost their homeland didn't quite identify as Vietnamese-only anymore, and they were so new to America, and they weren't accepted by Americans, so they had to figure out an identity all their own. I think that was what made this subculture so unique, the music was neither American or Vietnamese, and it sounded like the future with its synthesized instrumentation.

New Wave’s story is no simple periodization of the music. Instead, the film intimately follows and weaves together the lives of a few central figures to paint a lively and dynamic picture of the inner life of new wave. There is, for one, Ian Nguyen, better known as DJ BPM, a prominent new wave DJ who, as a teenager, against the disappointment of his strict father, fell in love with new wave both for its futuristic sound and its new possibilities for “cool.” Then there is Lynda Trang Đài, dubbed by some as the “Vietnamese Madonna,” who pioneered new wave and became massively popular and idolized through her appearances in Paris by Night covering popular eurodisco hits. And finally, there is Elizabeth Ai herself; as well as her aunt Myra, who took care of Ai growing up in the absence of her mother, who was too busy hustling to provide for the family. For viewers both familiar with new wave and entirely new to it, the film’s intimate documentation of the inner lives of insiders of the world of new wave is deeply captivating. Together, their lives come to form a vibrant mosaic image of the world that is new wave.

Lynda Trang Đài was a key figure in the new wave movement.

That said, compared to Ian and Lynda whose lives have long revolved around new wave, Ai’s connection to new wave is arguably far sparser, anchored primarily in childhood memories of listening to the music blasting in her teenage aunt Myra’s car. Why, then, is Ai’s personal story and history figured so prominently in the film? Ai herself could not anticipate her intimate link to the narrative when she first embarked on her project: “Initially envisioned as a documentary focused on the 1980s new wave scene, the project deepened as I explored stories and archives, which unexpectedly reopened old wounds and broadened the emotional scope of the film.” She elaborates:

During the filming journey of this documentary, I encountered a profound transformation in my relationship with the participants, which became one of the most intriguing and moving aspects of the process. Initially, I saw myself strictly as the filmmaker and viewed them as subjects, maintaining a professional distance. However, as we progressed, this distance gradually diminished. The participants, first-generation Vietnamese Americans, openly shared their traumatic experiences with me. They spoke of the heavy burdens they had carried for years: stories of displacement, loss, and resilience. As they shared, I realized that despite being a second-generation Vietnamese American, our experiences were not so different. I, too, had been carrying a significant amount of emotional baggage, perhaps unconsciously. There was a moment when it no longer felt right to merely document their stories without acknowledging my own. It seemed unfair to ask them to reveal so much without addressing the truths within myself.

In perhaps the most memorable sequence of the film, realizing she can no longer avoid confronting the painful fact of her mother’s absence during her childhood, Ai finally reaches out to reconnect with her mother, with whom she has long had no contact out of anger and resentment. And in finally confronting her mother, Ai realizes that she has misunderstood much of her own mother, that she had not known much of what caused her mother to act the way she did. Thus, what began as a film about a music genre ends up transforming into something much more intimate and personal.

A confession

Admittedly, I had never heard of new wave before watching Ai’s documentary. And given my lack of personal connection with the topic, I anticipated that my enjoyment of the film would be limited. Beyond such expectations, however, the film was a real joy to watch — in large part due to the personal aspects of the film that transcended the narrow scope of new wave, no doubt, but also, because the film left me with much to think about.

What exactly? Perplexingly enough, a quote, written in a substantially different context from New Wave, by Ta-Nehisi Coates in his book The Message. “We have a right to our imagined traditions, to our imagined places, and those traditions and places are most powerful when we confess that they are imagined.”

Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Ai.

At one point in the film, Ian Nguyen describes his adolescent immersion in new wave, “the music was innocent, but the scene we were in was not.” The scene was not innocent in that it harbored alcohol, drugs, sex. The music was not, in that it didn’t — after all, the music was just music. It is certainly a compelling and intriguing characterization of the dichotomy of new wave, but I also think that it is one we can further complicate.

Consider, for instance, the film’s portrayal of Lynda Trang Đài. For many in the 1.5 generation, Lynda was an icon of glamor, freedom, and possibility, exemplified when Ai’s aunt Myra remarks, “She was everything I wanted to become.”

But if Lynda embodied perfection for many, the film also reveals the many ways in which Lynda’s personal life is in fact far from perfect. We see, for instance, the ways in which Lynda struggles to juggle multiple jobs (including running a sandwich shop) to financially support her extended family — all of which, at one point, causes her to miss her son’s graduation ceremony.

The irony is difficult to ignore. The star who promised escape for so many children from the dysfunction of overworked parents is herself trapped in a similar cycle. I mention all of this not to taint Lynda Trang Đài, but rather, in light of all of this, to raise the question: what, then, could innocence mean for new wave music when the craze over new wave had so often been inseparable from the craze over Lynda Trang Đài?

Vietnamese New Wave found its start in VHS and cassette tapes containing covers of trendy English-language songs of the time.

The film’s brilliance lies in this: far from simply romanticizing new wave, the film humanizes the phenomenon, from its past to its present, from its devout followers to its poster child, laying bare all its messiness and complexities. The larger picture is far from perfect, but we feel love for it all the more because of that. If there is anything innocent about new wave, it is this care for it.

To return to Coates: “We have a right to our imagined traditions, to our imagined places, and those traditions and places are most powerful when we confess that they are imagined.” New Wave reminds me of these words because, in a way, the film feels like a confession of such imagining. “My truth was just a story I created to protect myself,” says Ai, reflecting upon the narrative she has constructed for herself to fill in her mother’s ellipses.

The same can be said of new wave more generally, too. If new wave subculture was driven by “rebellion and reinvention,” as goes the subtitle of Ai’s book, surely such reinvention also constituted a kind of imagining and reimagining. And New Wave shows us that, indeed, such imagining is most powerful when confessed because it is there, in that confession, that we can be most honest without letting go of the selves we’ve built.

A Damaged Masterpiece Reveals How Much We Take Our Cultural Heritage for Granted

2026-02-12T11:00:00+07:00

A once-damaged national treasure remains on view as if nothing had happened, while other works are displayed with little context — what does this tell us about how art museums preserve Vietnam's cultural heritage and shape our art history narratives today?

A few weeks before the Tết holiday, the Hồ Chí Minh City Fine Arts Museum feels much more lively than usual, as it does every year. From the entrance and spiral staircases of the almost 100-year-old heritage building, young local visitors pose in áo dài for new year photoshoots, while foreign visitors pose in nearly every corner. Only a few pause to look closely at the artworks scattered across different rooms of the main building, which house a collection of modern artworks by mostly southern artists before and after 1975.

Washing a lacquer masterpiece with dish soap

Passing the central hall with sculpture on the second floor, visitors turn left into a dim corridor that leads to one of the museum’s national treasures: the renowned 1989 lacquer masterpiece ‘Vườn Xuân Trung Nam Bắc’ (Central, Southern and Northern Spring Gardens) attached on a wall in its own separate air-conditioned room dedicated to maestro painter Nguyễn Gia Trí (1908–1993).

Nguyễn Gia Trí (1908–1993). Vườn Xuân Trung Nam Bắc (Central, Southern and Northern Spring Gardens), 1989. Lacquer on board. 200 x 540 cm. Collection of Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum.

Opposite to the masterpiece, the late painter’s tools and materials are displayed behind glass, alongside some pencil and watercolor sketches. Yet, no context is provided to explain the significance of the materials and techniques of this masterpiece. In the painting itself, twenty women dressed in their own traditional outfits and áo dài across the country’s three regions gather to celebrate the spring festival at a temple, surrounded by nature and a lively atmosphere of peaceful time. Signature red lacquer dominates the composition; eggshell inlay and gilded gold are integral to the whole painting’s surface. Nguyễn Gia Trí spent nearly 20 years completing the work with the assistance of his students: from 1969 when the country was still in the midst of war, to 1989, during the country’s transition through the Đổi Mới (Reformation) period.

Nguyễn Gia Trí’s personal items and painting tools at Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum.

The first impression from most visitors entering the room was amazement. Someone paused and asked: “Nguyễn Gia Trí… you mean, the old D2 street?” before proceeding to pose for photos from different angles. Other visitors, especially foreigners, walked back and forth in front of the work, squinting at the wall text, only to find a few lines of artwork description and the artist’s biography. Despite initial admiration, some began to express slight confusion while sensing that something was off about the national treasure. In certain areas, layers of black lacquer appeared worn, the gilded gold darkened or worn out, and the eggshell inlay looked fragmented, disrupting the fluidity of the details. Importantly, despite the dominant lively red tones, some colors in the details had undeniably faded.

“This painting must have been damaged once before. Look at this layer of paint over there. It’s already worn out, and the colors are so dark and pale now,” a Vietnamese visitor said to his group of friends after carefully viewing the artwork. The masterpiece remains on the wall, celebrating spring as prayer for the country to endure war and move towards reunification. Yet, a sense of quiet conflicted feeling emerges. Something feels off, and no one seems to know, or remember, the damage that had changed the work permanently.

Details of Vườn Xuân Trung Nam Bắc (Central, Southern and Northern Spring Gardens) at Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum.

‘Vườn Xuân Trung Nam Bắc’ made major news headlines in early 2019, after it was found to have suffered major damage after being taken off for cleaning in December 2018. It was later revealed that the damage had been treated with sandpaper, bột chu (a polishing powder) and even… dish soap — perhaps the last material that one would expect in artwork conservation. The incident sparked outrage among the art community and authorities, with many online articles calling out the carelessness and lack of accountability, and an urgent demand for the national treasure to be repaired with special care.

According to painter Nguyễn Xuân Việt, one of Nguyễn Gia Trí’s few students who understands the master painter’s techniques well, the reinforcement work could only restore about 80% of the painting. The damage done to the materials on the surface, however, cannot fully be reversed. In other words, while the painting survives materially, the original spirit has been lost. Nearly seven years later, now in 2026, the partially repaired work has returned to public view, as if nothing had happened. Visitors are left with no choice but to accept this reality of an artwork that has once been damaged, with little acknowledgement of what was lost, with minimal context beyond the familiar narratives of national pride and historical symbolism.

Visitors pose with artworks.

Beyond one damaged painting

Leaving the room for the artwork and heading back through the corridor, one would notice the contrast is quite intriguing: while 20 female figures celebrate spring within the ‘Vườn Xuân Trung Nam Bắc’ masterpiece, young visitors rush to take their pre-Tết photoshoot with camera equipment, tripods, and even reflector boards filling the balconies and spiral staircases. Some film TikTok videos along the balconies, some even fall asleep on the benches, while foreign visitors navigate through the crowd, trying to understand the paintings with little context.

Perhaps, the national treasure lost its soul due to the damage caused by a lack of accountability, just as the museum’s function also seems to be fading. Much of the collection has become a secondary background to most visitors, shaped by an incohesive narrative and absence of context that discourages deeper engagements, or even minimal attention, towards the artworks and their historical significance. While it is rather unfortunate that most guests only connect with the venue on a surface level, one could attribute this visitor behavior both to individual apathy towards the arts and the current conditions of a national-level institution, where conservation has been treated lightly, and artworks are bound to a one-sided narrative without sufficient explanation.

The museum interior and Tết photoshoots.

This raised further questions about the state of other artworks in the museum: limited government funding for acquisition, conservation and daily operations; the high temperatures and humidity of Vietnam's climate; and architectural and spatial challenges. This does not take into account the fact that the plot where the museum sits is at risk of sinking due to the construction of a high-rise next door.

At this moment, the concern is no longer solely about why and how an artwork was damaged. It projects a bigger picture about the current state of cultural heritage preservation in Vietnam, as well as the key players' struggle to foster awareness and create meaningful narratives that accurately represent Vietnam’s art history and cultural heritage in Saigon, as it’s difficult to move beyond the nostalgic “time capsule” of the turbulent past amidst changing times. This feels especially urgent in the age of cultural tourism and social media, when the demand for art consumption among the younger generations is increasing, alongside the growing number of tourists visiting the country.

The looming construction project next door once caused the collapse of the museum's northern gate due to subsidence.

A state-owned art museum serves the role of researching, preserving, and presenting artworks that reflect a nation’s cultural heritage and collective memory, reflecting the development of techniques, aesthetics, and art education — more than just holding what remains and survives from the past. In post-colonial and independent Vietnam, museums have played a central role in nation-building narrative, through a constructed national (art) history that features revolutionary artists. Still, the decisions that shape these narratives are not within the public’s control, but with institutions and authorities. What remains in our control, however, is how we acknowledge and respond to the limitations in how our culture and history art is treated and presented, how we engage critically with art history, and continue shaping our own narratives in the present and future, beyond the museum walls and across different platforms.

Supporting our local art museum does not simply mean purchasing a one-day ticket to briefly view the works, then move on with photo ops. It also means showing up with awareness: asking why our institutions and art ecosystem still remain underdeveloped, whether we are truly comfortable with how the narratives are framed, and how we appreciate our history and the masterpieces left behind by those before us. The costly lesson of a damaged national treasure, perhaps one among others yet unnoticed, reveals structural issues that remain unresolved. Still, the growing interest in traditions, art, and culture suggests that there is still hope for public engagement and discourse.

Hidden within the wall text in front of ‘Vườn Xuân Trung Nam Bắc,’ a line from Nguyễn Gia Trí in 1979 reads: “Sáng tác ví như một bát nước, ta đổ tràn đầy, rồi những gì còn lại, ta giữ và phát triển / Painting and creating can be compared with the brim-full bowl of water, one retains all that remains and develops it.”

What remains after the damage and partial restoration is not the physical artwork itself, but the responsibility of those involved, and how we remember, question, and preserve what is left.

Recognized as a national treasure in 2013, ‘Vườn Xuân Trung Nam Bắc’ is now on view in the permanent collection of Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum. More information about the masterpiece and museum admission can be found on this website.

In 'Đêm Giao Thừa' EP, a Đàn Tranh Artist Offers Novel Twists on Nostalgic Tết Sounds

2026-02-10T11:00:00+07:00

Indie đàn tranh artist Brian Bùi has just released Đêm Giao Thừa, an EP containing energetic covers of three classic Tết songs and an original track that pays homage to styles from the 1960s and 1970s.

Layering elements of bolero, psychedelic cumbia, samba rock, and cha-cha-chá, the 13-minute extended play blends nostalgic sounds and rhythms with fresh perspective to create a new feeling for the season. “While the EP draws from the past, I also experimented with guitar effects on the đàn tranh and introduced South American genres that hadn’t yet been popularized in Vietnam during that era. Đêm Giao Thừa celebrates the start of a new year, as well as a new direction for my music that represents who I am in this moment,” he explained on the project's page.

Video via Brian Bùi's YouTube.

Brian switched from the violin to the đàn tranh as part of his exploration of traditional music, a way to connect with his cultural heritage. He studied the đàn tranh with Vân-Ánh “Vanessa” Võ while pursuing a degree in music composition at the University of the Pacific and later with NSƯT Nguyễn Thị Hải Phượng as part of the Master of Arts degree he is currently pursuing at Berklee Online.

Photo by Chiron Dương.

Đêm Giao Thừa is is currently available on all major streaming apps, and he is touring in support of it in the United States through March.

The Vibrancy of Vietnam's Mundane Depicted by Illustrator Chan-Nhu Le

2026-02-01T16:00:00+07:00

“I miss that. When I was young, on the motorbike with my friends, it was like ’hey, you have 15 minutes?’ and we just met up [...], had some street food and did literally nothing; just street watching. It was fun,” Chan-Nhu Le shared with Saigoneer about the inspiration for her illustrations.

Saigoneer was first drawn to Chan-Nhu Le’s work because of its playful depiction of daily life in Vietnam, but she spoke to us from California, where she emigrated at age 23. The artwork allows her to return to happy moments and memories here, where she was born and raised, as well as share the country’s culture abroad. Meanwhile, the term she used, “fun,” to describe her teenage experiences could certainly apply to her style as a whole, thanks to its employment of vibrant colors, jovial scenes, and lighthearted commotion.

Born and raised in Huế, Chan-Nhu Le has connections with numerous regions in the country: her father is in Hanoi, while she worked for a time in Saigon. Such familiarity with different cities allows her to blend and borrow elements from regional cultures into composites that aim to speak to Vietnam as a whole, particularly when seen by those outside of the nation. Her illustration for Tết, for example, features Bia Saigon, Hanoi and Huda as well as southern fruits and northern flowers.

Chan-Nhu has taken a circuitous route to art, having started a career in social work upon graduation. Motivated by a desire to get to know people and help them, she was quickly disenchanted by bureaucracy and the constant stresses related to securing funding. Recognizing an opportunity, she enrolled in art school in the US, beginning on a photography track. In one of her classes, however, she saw the work of Hong Kong illustrator Victo Ngai. “What kind of art is it?” she remembers wondering. ”It's exactly what I wanted to do, and I switched majors the next day.”

Studying art formally allowed Chan-Nhu Le to focus on her aims and stylistic preferences. “I know exactly what I want to do with illustration, but when I switched to illustration… I didn't have the skill set to kind of make it happen.” Through study, practice, and by evaluating her past works, she is now better able to create work she describes as “straightforward” and “able to tell a story.”

Citing Julia Rothman, a New York Times illustrator with an expansive portfolio that includes editorial work for the New Yorker and Washington Post, Chan-Nhu aspires to work with a story or conceptual message. And while her illustrations often appear as if they were based on a specific photograph, she says that even though she may use numerous photographs as sources for a composite, the scenes inherently involve memory and imagination. For example, her wedding illustration has many elements Saigoneer readers will recognize: a group of wobbly dancers with drinks and a microphone, a child looking up at a crowd of adults, a couple pouring onto a pyramid of glasses, etc. And yet, if you look closely and recognize how many people are singing at once, you'll realize it's a work of fantasy.

Her large works rely on specific, precise details to contribute to larger moods and feelings, while her works of singular figures or objects invite recognition of the familiar. Many of them also come from memories, such as the sight of a policeman on the back of a Grab Bike, or a fish vendor who had chastised Chan-Nhu for not wearing enough clothing in the harsh sunlight. “Chopping fish and getting mad at me for not wearing enough protection for my skin is hilarious and just so random, but that is so Vietnam — chaotic and so random.”

Since attaining her art degree, Chan-Nhu Le has explored different means of utilizing her skills while meeting the real-world needs of rent and food. To get a sense of what it would be like to work as a full-time illustrator in Vietnam, in 2017, she moved to Saigon and took a position at a publication producing timely cartoons in response to soft news stories. While a good experience, she admitted that it wasn’t a good fit, and she didn’t care enough about the content she was tasked with creating.

While in Saigon, she offered free drawing classes at Vin-Space Art Studio, which encouraged her to pursue a career in education upon returning to the US. Following the cumbersome licensing process to become a public school art teacher in California, she is now in her fourth year at a middle school, where she is tasked with introducing children to a wide array of art styles, mediums, histories, and ideas. While enjoying the job, she noted how physically and emotionally draining it can be. The job leaves her less time and energy to pursue her own artwork.

While in Vietnam, Chan-Nhu Le connected with like-minded Vietnamese creatives, including the folks behind Collective Memory and OH QUAO, which are amongst the shops that sell her work here. Other connections simply contribute to her digital network of support and encouragement that spans borders and languages. She makes regular return visits to Vietnam to visit family, and the trips provide more inspiration for her future projects. Meanwhile, she dreams of having editorial work in a prestigious publication like the New York Times, or gracing a Uniqlo shirt. And in the meantime, her artwork promises to delight those who see it online or in a shop and experience the comforts of recognition and appreciation for the precious moments of doing “literally nothing.”

The Unquenchable Spirit of Artist Lê Triều Điển

2026-01-29T10:00:00+07:00

“Điển is like a flower; there is no question of growing or not growing.”

It’s the same with Lê Triều Điển and creating art, according to his fellow painter and friend of many years, Tri Ròm.

“My paintings are like scar tissue,” Điển says when pressed for the best feedback he’s ever received about his paintings. “You might look at them and see rubbish, but they heal pain,” he adds before likening them to the lotus flowers that emerge from the muck in his delta homeland.

A flower emerging from mud is an apt metaphor for Điển’s life and career as a whole. He was born in the Mekong Delta in 1944, and the past eight decades have involved the poverty, sacrifice, war and trauma that are sadly common to his generation, as detailed in his powerful autobiography The Journey of Alluvium. Yet, like a lotus refusing to wilt during a drought and blooming spectacularly when the rains return, Điển has triumphed to become an important, successful artist.

Luxury cars were filling with people who had just finished lavish breakfasts behind myself, Tri, Điển, and his daughter-in-law at the restaurant of the homestay in Can Tho we’d stayed at the night before. The street leading in along the Hau River was lined with imposing new mansions looming behind gaudy gates and I commented to Điển about how different the area must look from when he was stationed in Can Tho during the American War, when the river was “patrolled up and down by warships and patrol boats day and night” and the surrounding area was full of “coconut orchards with topless tree trunks, paddy fields devastated by clearing chemicals.”

Yes, he said, the area was very different from when locals here went out in the middle of the night to catch mice and snakes and frogs to sell at the “ghost markets;” but “go into one of those houses and look at their walls, they have no real art.” This is as damning a description as Điển can levy, because to him art, in addition to family and community, is the most important part of life.

Điển is refreshingly unimpressed with money, sometimes to the frustration of people attempting to sell his paintings. His friends casually mention the great numbers of paintings that were sent overseas for various sales or collections that he never saw again or received payment for, and there is even discussion of a zoo in Denmark that plagiarized his plans for a giant panda enclosure.

At one point during our weekend together, a gallery owner who was with us brought up plans for an exhibition in Hanoi to sell his paintings. Điển simply lit a cigarette, threw up his hands and walked away while telling the man to talk to the woman who manages those matters for him. Asked point-blank what he thinks of the business side of art, he says one needs to understand it but ultimately, “as an artist, you make art, you do your best. Everything else? Leave it to other people.”

“Emotions as Transparent as Water from its Source”

The one constant throughout Điển’s life has been creation. At the age of 12, he moved to Saigon for a formal art education. While he didn’t enjoy the rigid coursework and sterile approach to painting, living in the city introduced him to a variety of other artists, writers and creatives whose philosophies and lifestyles proved fundamental for how he would approach the world and his place in it.

Điển was able to avoid frontline conflict during the war by producing technical drawings and later studying aviation mechanics. During the war, he drifted between Da Nang, Can Tho, Vinh Long and Saigon, surrounding himself with a great variety of passionate individuals to discuss literature, poetry, music, and painting while producing literary journals and hosting small art exhibitions at cafes and bars. He lived, he says, as a bụi đời (dust of life), a vagabond. With little more than a chair that could unfold into a comfortable enough bed, he moved from here to there on a whim with frequent trips to visit his family.

During those years, painting was a sort of therapy for him. “I felt that I was painting for myself, for my own soul that was suffering the pain of my war-torn country. I painted my dreams and hopes of a peaceful future, and I painted children’s pleasure and laughter on a happy field. I painted temples in ruin but young buds rising from burnt tree stumps could be seen.”

Yet he did not paint according to the styles he had been taught in school, nor did he follow any specific trends. Rather, he followed his instinct and spontaneous inspiration, never arriving at a blank canvas with a plan or idea, simply letting the lines and colors flow as they must. “I gradually eliminated all the craftsmanship, got rid of technical performance and returned to the nature of my innocence like a child drawing as simply as those ancient people leaving their paintings on cave walls, with emotions as transparent as water from its source flowing over gravel and stones to reach the plains,” he says.

He continues with this approach today. His often very large paintings have a raw boldness typified by strong lines and arrows that seem to rush across the canvas like waters surging across a floodplain. Given his biography, one can imagine scenes of delta floodplains, rice fields and humble countryside homes. There are also elements of sign language, Khmer and Oc Eo cultures and Theravada Buddhism. Điển can be evasive regarding what an actual painting is of, preferring viewers to take from the scenes what they will. This tendency to not explain every element of his work does not suggest a lack of artistic clarity, however.

While many of his paintings tend to be abstract and expressionist and contain elements of cubism, there are moments of literal specificity. His home is filled with his paintings and drawings: something hangs on nearly every inch of open wall and stacks of papers and canvases sit on nearly every available surface. During a recent visit to his home, he flipped through several dozen drawings and occasionally paused to point something out: a buffalo, a horse, a boat, a xích lô, his wife when she is writing a poem, his wife when she is angry at him, a self-portrait. He doesn’t offer why he painted those things, nor do I think to ask. It would be like asking a cloud why it was dropping rain. Yet he is quick to note where he finds inspiration: everywhere. His natural surroundings, cave paintings, architecture, and most importantly, his family and friends.

You have to know the rules before you break them is a common adage in art, often used in reference to how Picasso learned to paint in the traditional style of his day before moving on to the ground-breaking works he became famous for. Thus I asked Điển if he thought his conventional art education was necessary to make way for his abstract style. He shakes his head no, and says he is self-taught, before offering up this story:

An ancient Chinese king recognized the technical mastery of Chinese and Korean painters but considered Vietnamese to be less talented. He nevertheless invited them to partake in a contest wherein the winner would be the one that could depict the best dragon. The other painters worked meticulously on extravagant dragons with fine details. A Vietnamese contestant, Trang Quynh, didn’t have any formal education in art and simply dipped all ten fingers in the ink and wiggled them down across the canvas. The king shook his head at the ten zig-zagging streaks of ink and said dragons do not look like that. Quynh countered that in his homeland, dragons do in fact look like that. And unless a dragon were to appear before them now, no one could tell him otherwise.

This confidence in his own artistic vision, playful wit and connection to depicting his homeland resonates through his hundreds of works.

“I don’t have a teaching method, I have a living method,” he says when asked what he says to younger artists that seek him. Truly, he may not offer specific theories on balancing colors or controlling white space, but one watching him surely receives a lesson in how to live as an artist. To that point, I should have known better to ask him how he prefers to work: in silence or with music? In the morning or at night? At home or a studio? After a few glasses of wine or sober? The answer was simply “Yes.”

This adaptive nature applies to the mediums he uses. In addition to the conventional canvas and inks, paper with watercolor or pen, and ceramics, Điển can create art out of just about anything. For example, when he once took great delight in flipping over one painting on his wall to reveal it was in fact the cardboard lid of a bánh trung thu box. Similarly, painted chair cushions dangle from his staircase railings and x-ray paper covered in images dangles from the ceiling.

Witnessing Điển work provides further insight into his philosophy. When Saigoneer visited to take photographs for this story, we were greeted with fresh fruit, snacks and beer. Before any discussion of photographs we hoped to take, he thanked us for visiting and said he wanted us each to go home with one of his paintings. When we asked if we could take a short video of him at work, he noted that because it was my birthday he would draw a portrait of me. With concentrated ease he filled the paper with divisive lines, pausing momentarily to ponder the space before grabbing a new color; the piece came together like the effortless blooming of a complex flower.

Work Before Play

Creating art can be a lonely, tireless task especially if one dabbles in genres that are not embraced by mainstream artists, but being an artist is not. I got a first-hand glimpse of the importance Điển places on community during the first lunch we shared. At the end of the meal, he lifted his beer glass and turned slowly to everyone at the table and one by one: “You: I want to see your next painting. You: I want to read your next poem. You: show me the next painting you make. And you: I cannot wait to have another meal together again.”

Điển’s genuine and motivating words that day came as no surprise based on the way he described his life and journey. Beginning with the many teachers he studied with and the peers he surrounded himself with, his book is filled with references to painters, sculptors, singers, and writers with whom he sat in cramped cafes and bars, sharing ideas and exchanging work. He details countless literary journals that rose and fell and exhibitions for soon-to-be-defunct groups and organizations. They are not attempts at name-dropping, but rather reflective of the way he sees community as an integral part of creativity and the galvanizing effect it can have on a person’s life.

Considering this past, I was unsurprised to learn that our main activity on the day we arrived in Vinh Long would be to meet with his group of friends at one of their terracotta kilns. We gathered in the spacious living room which was filled with paintings, sculptures and ceramics. The owner pointed at the paintings explaining who had painted each: a friend, a child, himself. New books were exchanged as we sat drinking coffee, eating snacks. I naively asked Điển if this was what it was like back in the day when he spent time with the same group of friends. He laughed and said, “No, all we did then was work, work, work.”

Indeed, while Điển may have achieved a level of financial comfort now, leaner decades were filled with a great variety of arduous tasks to make ends meet. While subsisting on little more than boiled potatoes and sorghum supplemented with boiled pig bones, Điển earned a paycheck painting vehicle license plates and state propaganda posters, weeding paddy fields, harvesting water spinach, selling simple cakes, and delivering newspapers. And of course, in the spacious factory beside the house we were sitting in, he crafted terra cotta statues.

The lifting of the embargo with America and the generally improved economy has reverberated across society as exemplified by the terracotta factory. Before its owner settled into semi-retirement and tapered down production, he employed upwards of 1,000 people. Điển, too, has enjoyed more financial comfort in recent years. After decades of group and solo exhibitions, since 2005 he has enjoyed an amount of commercial success. His work has been featured in the prestigious Galerie Dumonteil in Paris, attracted the attention of renowned international art collectors, and been in numerous shows and galleries here in Vietnam.

“Fifty Years in Prison”

There once was a struggling painter who began coming home to find his clothes and house cleaned and food prepared. This went on for quite some time and he never could figure out who was doing it. But one day he noticed a female figure in one of his paintings and became suspicious. He hid and waited after pretending to leave for the day. When he burst back into his house, he surprised the woman who had indeed emerged from the painting. He caught her and the two married. His life improved instantly and he was not only happy but also began to experience great fame and financial success. Unfortunately, this led to him drinking too much and losing his passion for art. Unable to rescue him from his alcoholism or re-ignite his love of painting his wife left him.

Điển originally offered this story, an altered version of a story by Đoàn Thị Điểm, to warn of the risks of fame and success. Adding, that while he is financially comfortable now, he is far too old to fall into any of the dangers that accompany them. Besides, is he famous? If you ask him, he doesn’t know nor care.

But then I pressed him if the characters in the story shared any similarities with him and his wife, Hồng Lĩnh. Sure, he agreed, her presence in his life has been instrumental. While it’s true that she manages many domestic tasks and shouldered a great deal of work during the poor years, working in a library as well as taking on odd jobs to help ensure he had resources needed to paint, that undersells her role in his life. He may jokingly say that they have been sentenced to each other for half a century, but he is utterly sincere when advising “When you get married, you must treat your wife like a goddess.”

Lĩnh is a gifted poet, sculpture, and painter herself and learned of Điển via his artwork more than 50 years ago. Seeing his work before she’d ever met, she explained to me, was what first won her over. At their wedding, a friend joked: “This couple might have their future in poverty. One artist usually leads his life in misery, they both are artists, so their misery maybe double.”

That prediction, thankfully never came to pass. Rather, the financial struggles they shared may have brought them closer together as people and as artists. When their eldest son was admitted to Saigon, they moved to the city and worked side-by-side to create paintings and sculptures with the hope they could sell them to restaurants and hotels. Their work continues to stand side by side, though now it is in galleries and exhibitions. And of course, lining the walls of their home.

One is not likely to get their work confused, however. While Điển prefers thick, angular lines, she opts for more curves and gentle restraint, though the most exemplifying difference is her frequent use of Vietnamese, English and French texts by herself and others, layered on top of the work. Lĩnh may be a quieter presence in rooms punctuated by Điển’s staccato chuckle, but her art and life is just as deserving of an article. Hopefully, that happens in the future, but in the meantime, no story about Điển could possibly be told without her inclusion.

Equally important as their work hung on the walls in their home is what is scribbled around it. Between paintings and photographs are the squiggled doodles of one of their grandchildren. By contrast, they help articulate how Điển’s seemingly simple strokes are the result of artistic rigor and practice combined with youthful exuberance. But more importantly, they serve as a metaphor for how his work is intrinsically tied to his family and the inspiration it provides, his belief that any surface can be a canvas, and that artistic impulses should never be ignored, but rather praised and promoted.

This article was originally published in 2021.

Cổ Động's Live Session Series 'Động Tag' Returns for Season 2 With 9 Vietnamese Artists

2026-01-27T10:00:00+07:00

Động Tag Live Session, Cổ Động’s series of live recordings aiming to highlight Vietnam’s up-and-coming musicians, is returning with a second season.

Động Tag first premiered back in 2023 with 11 episodes, each featuring one artist or group at a different location. Some of the more whimsical impromptu stages include Giấy Gấp performing on the bank of the Saigon River with the Ba Son Bridge hulking in the background, or Vũ Thanh Vân singing her heart out inside an ornamental fish shop.

A recap of Động Tag Season 1.

According to Cổ Động, the live session series was established to give lesser-known and new local musical acts to reach a bigger audience through their own musicianship. With high production value and recording quality, these live sessions will appeal to both listeners and artists, who can enjoy the music in a stripped-down, intimate way.

Season 2's featured line-up.

Season 2 of Động Tag has returned since last December, this time bringing along nine musicians back to the same stage — including familiar names like Nhạc Của Trang, Datmaniac, and Minh Đinh.

The season was co-produced by Cổ Động, BLAZE, PhimGoods, 326 Concepts, and Kontribute over four days. Have a taste of Động Tag Season 2 in a few snippets below:

EP01: Nhạc Của Trang

EP06: Chillies

Media courtesy of Cổ Động.

Memories and Heritage Considered Across Mediums at Dogma Prize Exhibition

2026-01-19T07:37:00+07:00

How can personal and collective memories – alongside questions of community and heritage – be explored through artistic practices that span different mediums and respond to changing times?

Entering its twelfth edition, the 2025 Dogma Prize Exhibition brings together nine artists from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia: Hà Đào, Đỗ Văn Hoàng, Lê Tuấn Ry, Willie Xaiwouth, Hằng Hằng, Hul Kanha, Nguyễn Đức Tín, Thuỷ Tiên Nguyễn, and Bi Tuyền. Organized by Dogma Collection, this year’s selection was made by a jury including artist Thảo Nguyên Phan, curator Bill Nguyễn, and art historian Pamela Corey – each of whom mentored three artists during the entire process leading up to the exhibition.

A makeshift shelter stands at the end of the corridor upon one’s arrival, where ocean sounds and market noises emerge. Inside the shelter, Đỗ Văn Hoàng’s short film The Tofu Maker’s Son blends fiction and documentary to recount his family’s history in Hong Kong refugee camps and his father’s life as an undocumented worker. Structured like a series of court sessions, with re-staged police raids and conversations with his father, the film unfolds as a confrontational dialogue between past and present, examines painful memories of family displacement, while also leaving space for remembrance and healing.

Đỗ Văn Hoàng. The Tofu Maker’s Son, 2025. Short film, 20 mins 55s. Film still courtesy of the artist (left). Đỗ Văn Hoàng. Water Spinach, Garlic, Chili, Coke (audio), 2023 (right).

Thuỷ Tiên Nguyễn’s series on miniature sculptures of everyday forms – Untitled (Notes on romance and cities), incorporates a system of feedback and sonic circuity, where street sounds, and melancholic music play on loop, as the objects remain hidden within wooden boxes along Dogma’s signature architectural structure. The installation evokes the feeling of mini theaters, with shifting backdrops behind a miniature couple, armchairs on a spinning stage, or flashing LED lights. The miniature works form a world on their own where time is trapped in repetition, with an emerging quiet sense of nostalgia and loneliness.

Thuỷ Tiên Nguyễn. Untitled (Notes on romance and cities) 1, 2025. Plywood, stain, reversed clock mechanic, toy traffic light, LED running name tag (left). Thuỷ Tiên Nguyễn. Untitled (Notes on romance and cities) 2, 2025. Plywood, stain, phone screen (right).

Inspired by Western modernist painting techniques, Bi Tuyền fuses them with Vietnamese domestic imagery and childhood nostalgia through her monochromatic painting Seven Green Beans. The absence of colors invites viewers to pause and pay attention to lights, shadows, and forms, with the artist asking: “Can black and white condense something essential?” Upon closer observation, one may notice the subtle traces of color beneath the monochromatic surface. Created amidst times of rapid cultural changes, the work resembles a moment of stillness – a reflection on what we choose to remember from the past as we move forward.

Bi Tuyền. Seven Green Beans, 2025. Acrylic on canvas.

Known for merging Catholic faith with Vietnamese traditional culture, Nguyễn Đức Tín’s Faith, features black mosquito nets with slits that partly reveal portraits of Our Lady of La Vang (Đức Mẹ La Vang) and the Christ Child, and Catholic martyrs between the 17th and 19th centuries. Their lives remain largely unknown, yet they upheld their faith despite tragic deaths. The layered mosquito nets represent concealed histories, memory, belief, and the passage of time. Alongside is the Heart series where viewers’ distorted reflection appears – where faith is reframed not solely for religious devotion, but for one’s purpose and inner strength.

Nguyễn Đức Tín. Faith, 2025. Watercolor, oil pastel, acrylic, mosquito net, canvas.

Spanning across three different levels in between the staircases, Willie Xaiwouth’s The Fading Breath of Forgotten Words presents script embroidered onto fabric, using bamboo flowers collected from his hometown Saiyabouli (Laos). Viewed from above, the Tai Tham script flows downwards along the fabric and slowly fades away. Belonging to the Tai Yuan people, descendants of the Lan Na Kingdom between the 13th and 18th centuries, now scattered across Laos and Thailand, Willie weaves together his own story and a fragile cultural legacy amidst changes of history and modern times.

Willie Xaiwouth. The Fading Breath of Forgotten Words, 2025. Handmade calico, bamboo flowers, Tai Yuan traditional skirts, cotton sewing threads.

In a reimagined alternative world, Hà Đào portrayed the notorious Hải Phòng female gangster Dung Hà as a transgender man wandering through the street like a ghostly figure in If Heaven Awaits. The work takes the form of a music video with 1990s Vietnamese aesthetics with Lam Trường’s ballad “Đêm Nay Anh Mơ Về Em”. Accompanied with the video work also features two laser-engraved crystal cubes, Castle I (Vũ Hoàng Dung’s Tomb) & Castle II (Đồ Sơn Casino), an empire that faded and now exists only in memory and imagination. Focusing on marginal lives, her works also resist and question mainstream narratives, stereotypes and social norms.

Hà Đào. If Heaven Awaits, 2024. Audio, video, 6 mins 39s. Castle I (Vũ Hoàng Dung’s Tomb) & Castle II (Đồ Sơn Casino), 2024 (left). Laser-engraved crystal cube, wooden stand, LED strip. Film still courtesy of the artist (right).

Unforgotten Land glows softly in a darkened space. Composed of hair stitched and pressed onto fabric by Hằng Hằng and her family, the work was created from a collective effort and speaks for family’s history and internal dynamics. The hair, gathered from her mother’s salon and the surrounding community, forms a surface resembling a fragile, scorched grassland. Each strand carries memories of war, conflicts, migration, yet also love and care. Through the material intimacy of hair, the work also reflects on what it means to collect, inherit, and carry historical legacies onward.

Hằng Hằng. Unforgotten Land, 2025. Hair, faux leather fabric.

Hul Kanha’s installation Plates of the Passed comprises fifty papier-mâché sculptures floating on thin poles across the space. Rendered with vibrant colours and childlike brushstrokes, the plates combine painted imagery, black-and-white photographs of childhood and family memories, sewn red threads, and gold paint. The brushstrokes and threads appear to hold cracks and lines together, while also evoking childhood trauma shaped by extreme hardship in rural Siem Reap. On these fragile surfaces, childhood memories are reworked through the artist’s adult perspective and personal recollection.

Hul Kanha. Plates of the Passed, 2025. Cycle paper, acrylic, sewing silk.

On the highest floor, Lê Tuấn Ry’s 18 Realms of Mound is placed behind a red curtain. Here, the visitors assume the role of spectators, activating a music box and observing a vertical row of CCTV screens that display a site-specific installation composed of old X-ray films of anonymous bodies – collected from clinics and hospitals and threaded together – located in an unknown, remote place. His work poses questions of surveillance and perception: "who is watching, who is being watched, and what becomes of that which slips outside the frame?"

Lê Tuấn Ry. 18 Realms of Mound, 2025. Old X-ray film, industrial safety pins, claw machine motors, car display screens, music boxes (installation block), water coconut fronds, charred wood, found steel base, aluminium profiles, asphalt, mother-of-pearl powder, red velvet curtains (screen block).

Dogma is a private collection and exhibition space dedicated to archival and contemporary art in and around Vietnam. Starting as a collection of revolutionary propaganda posters, the collection has since expanded into three interconnected programs: Collection, Research, and Prize. Now in its twelfth edition, the Dogma Prize has grown alongside Dogma Collection, evolving from an award focused on self-portraiture into a platform that celebrates the diversity of artistic practices across the region.

The 2025 Dogma Prize Exhibition is now on view at 27A Nguyễn Cừ, An Khánh Ward, Ho Chi Minh City until 28 February 2026.

Hanoi Indie Duo Limebócx Brings Tried-and-Trù Traditions to Young Ears

2026-01-08T11:00:00+07:00

A grazing buffalo, frolicking water puppets, mystifying tam cúc cards, an insolent maiden in áo tứ thân, a rustic meal around cái mâm. These are just a few standout visuals that will haunt your brain upon feasting your eyes on Limebócx’ debut music video ‘Yêu Nhau (Qua Cầu Gió Bay).’

Amidst bewildering characters and surreal segments that seem to have been spontaneously glued together in a chaotic fever dream, Tuấn and Chuối — the founding members of Hanoi indie duo Limebócx — appear as the only semblance of normalcy reassuring viewers that they’re watching a music video and not tripping balls. The pair first met through a jam session at the Rec Room community years ago, but only played music together during a music exchange program in South Korea, they told Whammy Bar in an interview. The founding of Limebócx started from an unknown mishmash of influences that didn’t fit in any particular genres but sounded relaxing when đàn tranh was added to the mix. Over time, the sight of a beatboxing Tuấn hunching over his trusty loop station and Chuối cranking out sultry bass licks or a đàn tranh solo would go on to become a beloved familiar image in the mind of fans starting from the duo’s debut in 2019.

In 2023, the renaissance of traditional Vietnamese elements in the local music landscape is so prevalent that you can’t walk two blocks in any metropolitan area without bumping into a fusion pop hit blasting from a bubble tea parlor or sidewalk coffee cart. Names like Hoàng Thùy Linh, Hòa Minzy, Văn Mai Hương, and K-ICM have all found success of varying degrees with new chart-topping tracks featuring facets of Vietnamese culture, from folk instruments like đàn nhị or đàn tranh to ancient literary classics. This appreciation for local flavors in mainstream pop productions has been bubbling away for half a decade or so, but is fully flourishing in 2023. Back in 2019, the release of Limebócx’ EP “Electrùnic” was the first time I saw zither and classical poetry having a place in such a contemporary, sleek and exciting context.

The cover of the extended play "Electrùnic."

Even with just a handful of songs, Electrùnic demonstrated a coherent creative vision that rose above the music landscape at the time. The debut extended play includes four tracks: ‘Yêu Nhau (Qua Cầu Gió Bay),’ the first to premiere, is based on the quan họ Bắc Ninh mainstay ‘Qua Cầu Gió Bay’; ‘Mục Hạ Vô Nhân’ and ‘Hồ Tây’ weave in poetry by 19^th-century literary powerhouse Nguyễn Khuyến; and ‘Chiều Trù Nhật’ takes inspiration from ca trù, another form of folk singing. Beatboxing, bass, echoing loops, and đàn tranh intermingle as the simmering base for Chuối’s deliciously viscous line delivery. It’s as if slam poetry has a dalliance with electronica during a quan họ performance.

Limebócx 2.0

Hà Đăng Tùng (left) and Lê Trang (right), the current roster of Limebócx.

Watching ‘Dung Họa,’ Limebócx’ latest single and music video released back in February, you might notice a new face in the member roster. Last year, Hanoi bid farewell to Tuấn as he embarked on a new academic journey in Australia, and the group welcomed a new member in the form of Hà Đăng Tùng, who brought his passion for electronic music into the tapestry of Limebócx. I met Tùng and Chuối for the first time via virtual call as they were drowned out by the cacophony of a random coffee shop in Hanoi. It was hard for me not to feel intimidated, as a self-proclaimed Limebócx groupie, to sit face-to-face with the people behind the songs that have accompanied me through numerous flights, night showers, and languorous Saturday nights lying on the floor feeling every beat.

My attempts to dispel the initial awkwardness with small-talk questions went about rather poorly, though many random things I’ve been wondering were answered. Chuối, meaning banana in Vietnamese, is the affectionate nickname of Lê Trang. As she was growing up, Trang’s father referred to her by a plethora of pet names depending on his mood, but only “Chuối” has stuck until now. Her favorite fruit? Not banana, but jackfruit. Is there a special story behind the band name? Nope, before a performance back in the early days, they were asked about the name of their act, so they fused together “chanh/lime” (đàn tranh) and “bócx” (beatbox). Limebócx was born and the rest is history.

Limebócx before a performance at the Temple of Literature in Hanoi.

The indie music scene in Hanoi was as small as can be and Tùng and Tuấn were already friends way back then, so it was a natural progression that Tùng stepped in to form Limebócx 2.0. “I was ‘coerced’ maybe three, four times [to join Limebócx]. After four, five nhậu sessions, I finally had to say yes,” Tùng tells me. “I already knew both of them. At the beginning, it was challenging as I didn’t know where to start, and the band already has an established image, so it was tough for me to fit in.”

Long-term followers of the independent music scene in Hanoi might already recognize the prolific “pedigree” of the members. Chuối was a segment of Hanoi quintet Gỗ Lim, iconic punk legends of the 2000s, and is currently the bassist for rock/metal group Windrunner. Also known as Đờ Tùng, Tùng studied Classical Guitar at the Vietnam National Academy of Music in Hanoi and is a member of several music entities, such as Bluemato, Phác Họa Xanh and Ngầm. Becoming a part of Limebócx, Tùng brought to the table a distinctive touch of electronic music, something that he has already been exploring in his personal endeavors, along with experimental and ambient sounds.

Not too cool for school

From nhậu mates to bandmates.

No matter which version of Limebócx one’s observing, they always ooze an effortless wellspring of coolness. Making a world of percussive sounds using just one’s mouth movements, gliding easily between traditional and contemporary instruments, and smashing together east and west, old and new — none of these are easy feats for newbies. Cool, however, is not exactly the first adjective one would associate with many of Vietnam’s traditional performing art forms. Quan họ, ca trù, chèo, đờn ca tài tử, hò, tuồng, xòe, and many more, all have rich histories, involve meticulous techniques, and are shining examples showcasing the country’s profoundly diverse cultures, but one is more likely to catch them at tourist sites and academic television documentaries than in the minds of young Vietnamese. Nguyễn Khuyến, whose vịnh poems inspired a number of Limebócx songs, is a mainstay author in the national high school literature syllabus, and thus, tends to evoke memories of exam-related dread rather than a sense of fascination among youths. This is all to say that there isn’t an obvious bridge between classical poetry and electronic music, but somehow Limebócx managed to make schoolwork thrilling.

There isn’t an obvious bridge between classical poetry and electronic music, but somehow Limebócx managed to make schoolwork thrilling.

Much of the link to traditional influences came from Chuối, who credited her interest in reading and poetry to the literature lessons back in high school. “In high school, we are taught so many types of fiction and poetry. There were things I really hate, but there were things I thought were cool and resonated with me,” she reminisces. Nguyễn Khuyến is perhaps best known for a trio of poems revolving around autumn: ‘Thu Điếu’ (Autumn Fishing), ‘Thu Ẩm’ (Autumn Drinking) and ‘Thu Vịnh’ (On Autumn). “I like things like that, a bit of romanticism in there, like taking a walk, appreciating the flowers, sipping some rice wine,” Chuối adds.

No matter which version of Limebócx one’s observing, they always ooze an effortless wellspring of coolness.

In between verses of poetry, the music of Limebócx is truncated by metallic licks of đàn tranh, our version of 16-string zither and a major factor contributing to the duo’s unique fusion sounds. Chuối received an old đàn tranh as a gift, but found the traditional instrument too challenging, so she didn’t touch it for a long time. When she started making music with Tuấn during the early days of the band, she decided to give it another chance. The next era of Limebócx might or might not see the addition of guitar phím lõm in its soundscape, something that Tùng is experimenting with after he was given one by a friend. This six-string lute is the Vietnamese adaptation of the European guitar, albeit with scalloped neck spaces between frets; this modification was designed to produce the reverberating sound commonly heard in southern cải lương.

Finding a new balance for a new album

Following a few years of relative quietude, Limebócx confirms with me that they’re indeed working on the next record, an album that pays tribute to the band’s old self, in-transition self, and new self. There’s a sprinkle of throwbacks to the first extended play, but with more of Tùng’s input. There’s an exploration of Limebócx as a trio, as evidenced in the latest single ‘Dung Họa.’ And of course, there’s Limebócx 2.0, much of which we don’t know about yet, but the making of which is a process of experimentation that they enjoy. Long-time supporters will be able to find the traditional elements they know and love about the duo, but electronic music will play a bigger role than before, adding more weight to the new record.

The new direction will lean more towards electronic, Tùng's forte, while retaining the traditional references that fans know and love about the band.

“Tùng has been in the group for a year, but at the beginning, we were just trying to get to know each other,” Chuối says of the process of making new music. “For the new album, I want to ‘exploit’ this one [points to Tùng] as much as possible so that it will turn out to be something with a lot of his personality and voice too.”

“I hope it will turn out okay,” Tùng quips. “I think it’s quite dope when I listen to it, but I don’t know what people will think.”

Limebócx’ biggest wish ever since the band’s founding is to bring their music and more traditional Vietnamese materials to the international stage. For decades now, local music has struggled to find a footing in bigger arenas, but there are glimmers of a very Vietnamese identity that are starting to shine through — in projects by Hoàng Thùy Linh, Dzung, and Limebócx, for example. After decades of learning from developed industries, perhaps we’re finally at a point where we can grow what we learned into a unique and personal sound.

What’s Limebócx’ biggest dream?

Chuối: Perform with a symphonic orchestra. Or even better, a traditional orchestra.

Tùng: Glastonbury. [laughs]

Photos courtesy of Limebócx.

This article was originally published in 2023.

In His Research-Driven Artistic Practice, Quang deLam Maps History, Knowledge Together

2026-01-04T10:00:00+07:00

What if art functions as a visual form for transmitting knowledge and entangled histories, and the artist is a messenger between them and the audience?

With an academic background in image sciences and professional career in digital media, French-Vietnamese multidisciplinary artist Quang deLam (Quang Lam) works across photography, painting and installation. His artistic process is often research-driven, where he starts from looking into science, history and geography, and with archival materials playing a significant role. This approach is reflected throughout his works included in his first solo exhibition “Seas of Silk” (2025) at Lotus Gallery and in the group exhibition “Archive and Post-Archive” at Vincom Center for Contemporary Art (VCCA) as a part of Biennale Photo Hanoi 2025.

Quang deLam next to his work ‘Tales from the Land of Dragons’ (2025) as a part of “Archive and Post-archive,” Biennale Photo Hanoi 2025. Photo courtesy of the artist.

His exploration of different materials and media is closely linked to his scientific background and inspired by Marshall McLuhan's well-known phrase, “The medium is the message,” from Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964). McLuhan’s idea implies that the communication medium itself is the message, and the form of the message determines the way the message is perceived — which resonates strongly in Quang’s practice. He initially worked primarily with photography, a medium often associated with “conveying the truth,” but became interested in how the same knowledge can be perceived differently when “translated” onto different mediums. Through the re-composition of objects and forms, painting allows him to reorganize visual information and alter how the truth is constructed and perceived by the audience. Since 2022, this has marked a shift in his practice as he became fully engaged in art-making by expanding beyond photography into painting and installation, alongside his research on science and history.

Quang Lam's series of paintings and installations, recently presented in the solo exhibition “Seas of Silk” (2025) at Lotus Gallery, draws on the history of the maritime Silk Road, shipwrecked ceramics, ancient civilization, and their surrounding narratives. Developed through his research of maps and astrology, as a combination of different materials and historical references, the bodies of works invites viewers to consider the inter-relationship between these histories, the way we view histories that we had never lived in but could only imagine and find out through historical sources, with connections to our contemporary world.

Installation view of ‘Seas of silk’ (2025) at Lotus Gallery. Photo courtesy of the artist.

The central installation depicts a shipwreck scene with broken ceramic fragments scattered on the ground. The paintings incorporate representations of the silk road expeditions, using the Maokun map as a reference, alongside motifs drawn from shipwrecked ceramics from museum collections and transformed into iconography. In ‘Cocoon’ (2025) and ‘Pegasus cells’ (2025), the centrally placed cocoon shape references the process of silk production. Surrounding this are images of corals and motifs from Chu Đậu ceramics, such as the mythical pegasus, a bird on a tree branch, shrimps, and flowers — all rendered in iconographic forms in bright, vibrant colors and clean lines. While the compositions evoke a sense of collage and abstraction, this reveals the artist’s process: collecting images and artifacts, turning them into iconographic elements, and arranging them on the paintings.

‘Cocoon,’ 2025. 100 x 80cm. Acrylic on canvas. Photo courtesy of the artist

‘Pegasus cells,’ 2025. 80 x 60cm. Acrylic on canvas. Photo courtesy of the artist.

In other paintings, such as ‘Dancing with the storm’ (2025) and ‘Oc Eo Aurora’ (2025), the imagery shifts towards sea and mountainous terrains, depictions of the wind currents, and shipwreck scenes. One work depicts ships coming from afar, with silhouettes of ancient Oc Eo statues appearing across the horizon. The main reference behind these paintings is the historic Mao Kun map, also known as Zheng He’s Navigation Map, published in 1628 during China’s Ming dynasty. Originally created as a rollable strip map documenting coastal regions and islands along the maritime routes, it is considered to be the earliest known Chinese map on the maritime Silk Road connecting different parts of Asia, Persia, Arabia and East Africa. By adopting this Asian map as a reference, Quang intentionally moves away from the Eurocentric perspectives that have long dominated historical mapping and education.

‘Oc Eo Aurora,’ 2025. 80 x 100cm. Acrylic on canvas. Photo courtesy of the artist.

‘Dancing with the storm,’ 2025. 80 x 100cm. Acrylic on canvas. Photo courtesy of the artist.

For the artist, maps themselves function as a kind of “abstract” art, even though they were not originally created with artistic intention. Ancient navigators recorded mountains, rivers, and terrains encountered during their journey, where lived experiences are translated into a system of measurement. While maps are often discussed from a geographical and political perspective, they are rarely considered within the context of art. This perspective made Quang highlight the importance of scientific knowledge beyond how mainstream art history is often written, which tends to focus on stylistic development.

Beyond cartography, Quang deLam also researches astrology, the use of astrolabes and compasses, acknowledging that navigators in the past relied on the stars in the sky to navigate their way through darkness, whether on land or at sea. For him, one of the most fundamental ways to understand the world is through measurement: time measured by the clock, directions determined by the compass, and position in relation to the stars measured through the astrolabe. These systems explain the different layers of his artistic and research practices, as well as different materials, with the aim of creating works that embody a sense of time and space.

‘Made in Far-East,’ 2025. 80 x 80cm. Acrylic on canvas. Photo courtesy of the artist.

‘Astrolabs Saigon–Hanoi’ (2024) features an astrolabe-like structure, composed of large ruler forms positioned at the top, paired with die-cut plexiglass panels engraved with city maps. Beneath the plexiglass layer is a painted star chart, alongside archived letters with destinations written on the envelopes. According to the artist, the constellations depicted in the work are calculated according to the specific date on the letters, determining the positions of the stars at that moment. The letters contain names of senders and recipients from different locations, with postal stamps and sending and receiving dates, providing the basic geographic information of who, where and when. Collected by the artist, the letters themselves are artifacts representing lived histories of movement, measurement, and communication.

‘Astrolabs Hanoi–Saigon,’ 2024. 90 x 36cm. Inox, plexiglass, wood, paper, postcard. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Returning to photography with an emphasis on archival materials accumulated throughout the years, Quang deLam’s “Tales from the Land of Dragons” (2025) was recently featured in the large-scale group exhibition “Archive and Post-archive” (2025) at Vincom Center for Contemporary Art (VCCA), curated by Đỗ Tường Linh and Éline Gourgues, as part of the Biennale Photo Hanoi 2025. The installation centers an index drawer surrounded by stacks of white boxes and books, with dragonfruits placed on top and inside the index drawer, and some in between the book stacks. These elements are connected by a dense network of electric wires and threads, with photography works of dragonfruits and books staged within old libraries on display in the background.

Installation view of ‘Tales from the Land of Dragons’ (2025) as a part of “Archive and Post-archive,” Biennale Photo Hanoi 2025. Photo courtesy of the artist.

The work took inspiration from the Vietnamese origin myth “Con rồng cháu tiên,” which depicts the Vietnamese people as descendants born from 100 eggs laid by the dragon lord Lạc Long Quân and the fairy Âu Cơ; following their separation, 50 eggs were taken to the mountains while 50 returned to the ocean. In this installation, according to the exhibition text, the work “takes the fruits of the dragons [dragon fruits] as the symbol of the eggs, and along the various pictures combines with architectural and book elements to compose the timeline of contemporary Vietnam.” By linking this myth with the modern and contemporary Vietnamese history, which was marked by upheavals and violence, the work reflects on the shifting access to knowledge: from the colonial period, where it was largely restricted to a small number of intellectual elite, to the post-independence period when public libraries play an important role in making cultural resources and knowledge accessible to the public. The photography installation itself in this case represents an archive of knowledge and a timeline of cultural memory.

Installation view of ‘Tales from the Land of Dragons’ (2025) as a part of “Archive and Post-archive,” Biennale Photo Hanoi 2025. Photo courtesy of the artist.

As much of his practice centers on history and knowledge, Quang deLam employs archival materials and research to bridge science and art, while reflecting on the nature of knowledge itself, and the significant role of human consciousness. “Knowledge comes first, then our consciousness and then followed by our actions. If you have knowledge but without consciousness, there’s no meaning in your action. The same thing applies to art, where action needs to be guided,” Quang deLam shared with Saigoneer.

For the artist, art functions as a means of knowledge and a prophecy: it is not about his own self-expression, but about transmitting understanding to the viewer, positioning the artist as a messenger. In this increasingly complex world — where distinctions between what is real and what is fabricated are often blurred — he believes that art plays a vital role in cultivating awareness and critical engagement with new knowledge, rather than relying on inherited moral principles passed down through generations.

Photos courtesy of Quang deLam.

Euphoria, Ruin, Nostalgia: Tracing Hanoi's Changing Skyline by Its Soundtrack

2025-11-16T20:00:00+07:00

From loudspeakers broadcasting construction anthems during wartime to melancholic ballads mourning vanished street corners, Hanoi's soundtrack reveals a city that has never quite learned to live in its present tense.

Hanoi has become, in these last few years, a vast construction site. The city transforms rapidly — a metamorphosis most visible to those who've left and returned. After several years abroad, I began to understand the emotions of those who abandoned the city in 1954 to head south, or departed in the 1960s for Eastern Europe to build socialism in Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, and Sofia, while American bombs tore their beloved Hanoi apart. Skyscrapers now sprout from the skyline like mushrooms after rain, concrete rainforest replacing the greenery that once covered the metropolis's outskirts.

Hanoi's skyline. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

The prevailing mood among young people responding to this rapid change is optimism. Like myself, many of my peers feel no astonishment when encountering pedestrian areas in North America, Europe, or, right nearby, in Singapore. In Vietnam's major cities like Hanoi, Hải Phòng and Saigon, you'll find the same malls, high-tech centers, and sprawling suburbs as anywhere in the west. Though perhaps you won't feel quite the same confidence when your plane descends into Shenzhen or Shanghai, where even westerners begin to suspect they're lagging in history's race.

“Socialism works, finally!” I hear this refrain from both my Canadian left-wing professors and Vietnamese orthodox Leninists populating Facebook comment sections. This excitement echoes the early years of socialist construction in the north during the 1960s and 1970s, when the Hanoi government received financial, material, and ideological support from the Soviet world to erect the first nhà tập thể — communal apartment blocks.

The euphoria of construction and how it outpaced reality

The brutalist nhà tập thể pales beside today's luxurious skyscrapers in Cầu Giấy, west of Hanoi. But when the country was caught between wars, these buildings symbolized socialist development, monuments to the glorious, ever-growing Vietnamese working class born of French colonialism and their fight for liberation. This achievement was celebrated in revolutionary songs broadcast through urban loudspeakers on every corner. In Phan Huỳnh Điểu's ‘Những Ánh Sao Đêm’ (Night Stars), the windowpanes of nhà tập thể were compared to stars in the galaxy, illuminating Hanoi's sky:

Làn gió thơm hương đêm về quanh,
Khu nhà tôi mới cất xong chiều qua,
Tôi đứng trên tầng gác thật cao,
Nhìn ra chân trời xa xa.
Từ bao mái nhà đèn hoa sáng ngời,
Bầu trời thêm vào muôn ngàn sao sáng,
Tôi ngắm bao gia đình lửa ấm tình yêu,
Nghe máu trong tim hòa niềm vui, lâng lâng lời ca.

The fragrant night wind circles near,
Our new-built homes still gleam from yesterday.
I stand atop the highest floor,
My eyes drift far where sky and city fade.
From roof to roof, the lights bloom bright,
The heavens sparkle, joining every flame.
I watch each home, each heart’s warm fire,
And feel my blood flow into song—
A joy that carries me away.

Nhà tập thể, mimicking the style of khrushchyovka blocks in the Soviet Union, was under construction in Hanoi. Photo via Thanh Niên.

Phan Huỳnh Điểu, one of Vietnamese socialist realism's greatest names, wrote ‘Những Ánh Sao Đêm’ in 1962–1963, while living in the communal house of the Vietnam Songwriters Union. His son, songwriter Phan Hồng Hà, recalled how the lights from the Kim Liên communal house, then in mid-construction, inspired Điểu when viewed from atop the union building. Born in Đà Nẵng and having built his early career in Quảng Ngãi, the revolutionary artist always looked southward, yearning to fight for it after moving to the north in 1955. He eventually returned to the south in 1964, serving as an artistic cadre spreading revolutionary spirit beyond the 17^th parallel. His longing, as expressed in ‘Những Ánh Sao Đêm,’ was finally fulfilled:

Em ơi, anh còn đi xây nhiều nhà khắp nơi,
Nhiều tổ ấm sống vui tình lứa đôi,
Lòng anh những thấy càng thương nhớ em.
Dù xa nhau trọn ngày đêm,
Anh càng yêu em càng hăng say,
Xây thêm nhà cao, cao mãi.

My love, I still must go and build new homes afar,
Where joyful couples share their life and dreams.
And in my heart, I find I miss you more.
Though day and night keep us apart,
The farther I go, the more I love you—
And build the houses higher, ever higher.

Revolutionary songs erupted at every corner of northern urban life, replacing what had been a “petit bourgeois” metropolis, as Phạm Tuyên sang in ‘Từ Một Ngã Tư Đường Phố’ (From a Street Corner). While red ideals' fate remained uncertain in the south, they occupied the highest position in northern hearts. Tuyên sang: “From a small street corner, I can already see the future coming near / In every figure, head held high, striding swiftly down the sidewalk.”

The metropolitan life of Hanoi, 1973. Photo via Bcdcnt.net

Written in 1971, ‘Từ Một Ngã Tư Đường Phố’ was more than Phạm Tuyên's artistic depiction of northern metropolitan life during the American War. Like a masterful conductor, he directed radicalized youth through song to move faster than history's natural pace:

Xây cuộc sống mới toàn dân gái trai vững vàng,
Nhịp đời cuộn nhanh nhanh như vượt trước bao thời gian.
Đường phố của ta vẫn đang còn hẹp,
Nhường bước thúc nhau đích xa cũng gần,
Tự hào đi trong tiếng kèn tiến quân vang ngân.

We build a new life—men and women, steadfast all,
Life's rhythm surges fast, as if outpacing time itself.
Our streets are still narrow, yet we make way for one another,
Urging each other on—our distant goal now feels so near,
Proudly we march to the echo of the trumpets calling us forward.

Phan Huỳnh Điểu dreamed of building the future while Phạm Tuyên urged youth to outpace the present. These imperatives revealed the revolutionaries' special relationship with time: they claimed to represent the future. Hoàng Vân's ‘Bài Ca Xây Dựng’ (The Song of Construction) became the anthem of this future as it would — and should — eventually materialize on Vietnamese, Chinese, and Eastern European soil. It captured the emotions of those who had just moved into newly constructed nhà tập thể. For Hoàng Vân, Hanoi's new urban setting promised a new life where new personhood would flourish.

This new life wouldn't remain localized to North Vietnam; it would spread globally with the working class's forward march through history. Vân sang proudly: “Tomorrow we set out once more / Toward new horizons waiting ahead,” followed by "Our hearts have merged in a common joy like rivers joining the boundless sea." Written in 1973, when northern victory seemed certain as American soldiers departed from the south, the song mentioned warfare only once, “[believing in the new life] in the smoke of bombs” but also “under the moonlight.” Public reception proved so enthusiastic that during the postwar period, it was performed repeatedly by socialist art's finest voices, like Ái Vân, throughout the European socialist world — just before its collapse.

‘Bài Ca Xây Dựng’ (1973), performed by Ái Vân in East Germany in 1981.

Yet these optimistic construction songs fundamentally mismatched their era's reality. While they excited people and helped them endure hardship, the actual situation differed drastically: American bombardments, urban populations fleeing to the countryside, extreme poverty, industrial failures, bureaucratic delays, so on and so forth. Construction projects stalled and showed degradation shortly after completion. Essentially, socialist construction became more psychological than material. These utopian songs held people together — especially urban dwellers who suffered most — rather than letting them fracture.

The rise of urban nostalgia

The 1970s' optimism evaporated as the country entered the 1980s, witnessing Soviet socialism's mass collapse and economic liberalization marked by the Communist Party's Sixth Congress in 1986 (Đổi Mới). Socialist optimism gave way to a newly emergent genre: urban nostalgia. The most famous example was Phú Quang's ‘Em ơi Hà Nội Phố’ (Darling, Hanoi Streets), an adaptation of Phan Vũ's poem of the same title.

What makes the song extraordinary is that poet Phan Vũ wrote the original in December 1972 during the US Air Force's Operation Linebacker II, which bombed Hanoi, hoping to pressure the north into cease-fire negotiations on terms acceptable to the United States. With its depressing, nostalgic tone, Vũ never published it, sharing it only with his intimate circle. He read it directly to Phú Quang in 1987, after the songwriter relocated to Saigon. Deeply moved by ‘Em ơi Hà Nội Phố,’ the composer selected 21 of 443 lines from the original work to craft Hanoi's new anthem.

Khâm Thiên street in Hanoi, after an American bombardment. Photo via Vietnam News International.

Rather than praising revolutionary symbols, ‘Em ơi Hà Nội Phố’ evoked a much older Hanoi — one that might have been condemned as “petit bourgeois” before Đổi Mới:

Ta còn em cây bàng mồ côi mùa đông.
Ta còn em, nóc phố mồ côi mùa đông, mảnh trăng mồ côi mùa đông.
Mùa đông năm ấy, tiếng dương cầm trong căn nhà đổ,
tan lễ chiều sao còn vọng tiếng chuông ngân

I still have you—the orphaned banyan in winter.
I still have you—the lonely rooftop in winter, the orphaned crescent moon in winter.
That winter, the piano sounded in the crumbling house,
And after the evening mass, the echo of the bell still lingered.

Phú Quang's melancholic masterpiece awakened a new aesthetic in Hanoi-inspired songs, including 'Cẩm Vân's ‘Hà Nội Mùa Vắng Những Cơn Mưa' (Hanoi Season Without Rain) and Trần Tiến's ‘Hà Nội Ngày Ấy’ (Hanoi of Those Days). These songs mourned not old socialist ideals but far older urban values — French colonial street scenes (especially the distinctive trees planted during that era), feudal myths (like Lê Thái Tổ's sacred sword), and traditional Hanoian customs overlooked during the socialist construction years. Consider these verses from Trần Tiến's ‘Hà Nội Ngày Ấy’:

Hà Nội giờ đã khác xưa
Kiếm thiêng vua hiền đã trả
Bạn bè giờ đã cách xa
Ngỡ như Hà Nội của ai?

Hanoi is changed from days gone by,
The holy sword of the wise king restored.
Friends have wandered to places far,
Whose Hanoi do I see before me now?

Hanoi, as depicted in urban nostalgic songs, was like Hanoi in Bùi Xuân Phái's painting. Photo via Kiệt Tác Nghệ Thuật.

Rather than celebrating post-Đổi Mới modernization and the country's opening to the wider world, Trần Tiến lamented lost Hanoian values. But he reached beyond recalling heroic days of resistance against invaders. He summoned remembrance of feudal Hanoi as Vietnam's cultural center. He mourned the old Hanoian elite who guided the city through both colonialism and revolution. Regardless of their politics, what mattered was their defense of Hanoi's metropolitan values, elements slowly vanishing under postmodern gentrification.

The nostalgia of Phú Quang, Cẩm Vân, and Trần Tiến wasn't simply a reaction to rapid urban development during both the 1970s and the contemporary era of economic liberalism. It responded to the promise of building a dreamworld during wars, revolutions, and hardship, which was fulfilled mentally but not materially. For so long, Hanoi's spirit resided in the future while actual life remained trapped in the past. People endured the pain and trauma of American bombs and radical social revolution while being told to feel perpetually optimistic. They never inhabited their present.

What will tomorrow's nostalgia look like?

Now that urban modernization has actually been accomplished, at the cost of demolishing old socialist icons like communal houses, what will future Hanoi generations remember and feel nostalgic about? In the early days of the 2010s, people expressed nostalgia for the subsidy era when life was simpler, governed by socialist morality and modest infrastructure. But it seems a wealthier, more dynamic life is now winning Hanoi's heart.

Perhaps this is the cruel logic of Hanoi's emotional architecture: we are always living in someone else's future, always mourning someone else's present. The revolutionaries of the 1960s and 1970s sang of futures they would never inhabit, building dreams in melody while American bombs destroyed stone and mortar. Their children learned to miss a past they were forbidden to mourn at the time. And now, as glass towers replace concrete blocks, as luxury malls erase subsidy-era markets, we're constructing yet another promised land that today's youth will someday lament when it, too, becomes obsolete.

In front of Đông Kinh Nghĩa Thục Square, 1973. Photo via Vietnam News Agency.

What makes this cycle particularly poignant is that each generation believes its present will finally be the one that lasts, the one that fulfills all previous promises. The socialists thought their communal houses would stand as monuments to a permanent revolution. The nostalgists of the 1980s believed they were preserving something eternal about Hanoi's soul. Today's developers and their young, cosmopolitan customers imagine they're building a modern city that will endure.

But if history teaches us anything, it's that Hanoi will continue to transform, and each transformation will feel like both progress and loss.

Nguyễn Đức Tín Weaves Spirituality, Faith, Everyday Life Altogether in His Paintings

2025-10-29T11:00:00+07:00

Can a painting reflect who we are, even if we can’t see ourselves thoroughly? And how does faith guide us forward in life?

Based in Hồ Chí Minh City, Nguyễn Đức Tín is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, mixed media, and conceptual installation. In recent years, he has become well-known for incorporating mosquito net (vải mùng) into his paintings, while his latest works also experiment with a wide range of materials, including canvas, dó paper, colored acrylic board, and stainless steel. His most recent solo exhibitions include “DUCTIN” at Lotus Gallery (2025) and “Under The Sun II: Mùng Trời Chiếu Đất” (2024) at Sun Life Flagship - De La Sól (2024). He also participated in group exhibitions such as “Thanh Kiều Art–Culture Exhibition” (2025) at Hải An Bookstore, Hanoi Grapevine Selection (2024), Ồ Ạt – Oh Art (2024–2025), 2T (2022), and international programs such as the India Art Camp (2023).

His recent works reveal not only technical experimentation with different choice of materials, but also how faith has been the main driving force throughout his artistic journey. His works uphold dialogues between faith and everyday life, which is inspired by his very own Catholic upbringing and his deep engagement with Vietnamese traditional culture.

After graduating from the HCMC University of Fine Arts, Nguyễn Đức Tín spent another few years expanding his cultural and spiritual studies in Australia and the Philippines. His work often draws from traditional Vietnamese aesthetics, theology, and social reflection, interweaving memory, myth, and modern life. When preparing for a new exhibition, he usually starts by establishing a central theme, then spends time researching and gathering materials.

For instance, in “Mùng Trời Chiếu Đất” (2024), he focused on the everyday objects that he grew up with, mainly mosquito net (mùng) and the mat (chiếu) and explored their connection to Vietnamese culture, such as children’s games and afternoon naps. For “DUCTIN” (2025), the inspiration came from a trip to Hanoi as he saw the collective housing blocks there as a miniature society, where people share common spaces but each has their own story: someone with authority — kings and officials in his paintings, the talkative person, the quiet introspective one, the inner demon within each individual, or the person who is punished among others.

“The Lady of Faith” (back), 2025. 40 x 100, 40 x 70 cm, 40 x 60 cm (set of 5 panels). Plexiglass, fabric, glass paint and acrylic. Installation view at Lotus Gallery.

“The Lady of Faith” (Nữ Vương Đức Tin), created in 2025 and including a set of five two-sided panels that evoke both Catholic stained glass and the form of a hanging screen door, features Catholic figures such as Mother Mary intertwined with elements rooted in Vietnamese folk tales — characters, myths, and spiritual motifs, such as the phoenix and the parasol tree (cây ngô đồng). According to the artist, the rose symbolizes the joy and gentleness that Mother Mary brings to humanity, while the parasol tree, in Vietnamese culture, represents a virtuous and kind person ready to welcome holy figures. It also reflects Mary’s gentle and humble character, as she receives God with the words “xin vâng.”

The integration between his Catholic faith and Vietnamese traditional culture emerged naturally in Tín’s works. During his time in monastic life, he studied a lot of philosophy and theology, while Vietnamese culture was something he explored personally. When working with theological materials, mainly Catholic, that knowledge sank deeply into his subconscious. Prior to “Mùng Trời Chiếu Đất” (2024), he had not painted much about Vietnamese culture, and it was during this project that the fusion began to emerge. By reading the Bible and other Catholic texts alongside a rediscovery of tradition, he gradually found a connection between the two.

“The Lady of Faith” (front), 2025. 40 x 100, 40 x 70 cm, 40 x 60 cm (set of 5 panels). Plexiglass, fabric, glass paint and acrylic. Installation view at Lotus Gallery.

To Tín, each artwork represents a human being, which explains the complexity of materials used in his works. In the “Heart” (Tâm) series (2025), each material represents each part of a human: craft paper and canvas stand for the bones, clear orange acrylic board embodies muscles, mosquito net fabric resembles human skin, die-cut mirror acrylic represents the soul. This series of orange-hued paintings shows human beings in different stages of emotions against the backdrop of Vietnamese folklore. In each painting, there’s always one human being depicted with a mirror-like material above the mosquito net fabric, prompting viewers to see their own distorted reflection. In this way, the audience does more than observe the artwork; they encounter a version of themselves, confronting the inescapable complexity of their own humanity.

Heart 5 (Tâm 5), 2025. 80 x 60 cm. Dó paper, plexiglass, fabric, stainless steel, oil pastel and color pencil.

Heart 2 (Tâm 2), 2025. 80 x 60 cm. Dó paper, plexiglass, fabric, stainless steel, oil pastel and color pencil.

Heart 11 (Tâm 12), 2025. 80 x 60 cm. Dó paper, plexiglass, fabric, stainless steel, oil pastel and color pencil.

Heart 12 (Tâm 12), 2025. 80 x 60 cm. Dó paper, plexiglass, fabric, stainless steel, oil pastel, and color pencil.

Mosquito net is commonly known as a household material, and probably the last material that one can think of when it comes to making a painting, as it gets torn easily and can be stretched more than regular canvas or silk. To work with this material, the artist needed to go through many different trials and errors, and eventually mastered the art of painting on such fragile material. This new experiment and artistic direction began in 2022, when the artist went through financial difficulties, and his mother gave him a bag of fabric, including mosquito nets. He made use of what was available and often added an extra layer of material underneath when painting. Over time, he has learned to adapt and create with whatever he could find, even using photographic gel filters or plastic bags if needed.

Details of “Heart” (2025).

Regarding his choice of stainless steel instead of real mirrors in his works, Tín shared that mirrors oxidize quickly, and eventually, stainless steel became a material that aligns with the themes and messages in his work. Unlike a perfect mirror, stainless steel is not completely reflective, but only offers a distorted and blurry glimpse, symbolizing how we can never fully understand our inner selves. The moments we look into a mirror are when we’re most self-aware, yet the reflection of our soul is something that not everyone, sometimes not even ourselves, can truly see through.

Details of “Serenity 1“ (Thanh tịnh 1), 2025. 60 x 40 cm (set of 2 panels). Glass paint and acrylic on dó paper and plexiglass. Installation view at Lotus Gallery.

“Having faith in oneself is already a form of progress,” Tín told me. When viewers encounter his works, one of the first impressions is often a strong sense of faith — a core element that has naturally been part of his creative process since the beginning, shaped by his upbringing. Yet in his practice, faith does not have to be tied to any particular religion, as it can be about anything that gives a person strength, purpose, and a reason to exist in the present moment.

There were times when he felt uncertain about the future, and maintaining a main job for stable income also meant that the time left for painting was limited, but it was precisely this discipline that allowed him to keep creating. Rather than being paralyzed by doubt or overthinking, he pushed himself to paint consistently and set deadlines to stay on track. This self-discipline is deeply rooted in his faith, providing him with the strength and commitment to continue pursuing his artistic path.

Inspirations from Nguyễn Đức Tín’s studio.
Left: Lights reflected through layers of acrylic board gave inspiration to the “Heart” series.
Right: Shadows and reflections.

In the near future, Tín hopes to explore new facets of Vietnamese everyday life and culture, including subjects like motorbikes, while experimenting with different materials such as lacquer, and researching more on church stained-glass paintings.

Photos courtesy of Nguyễn Đức Tín.

The Multiverse Behind the 1990s Classic 'Người Tình Mùa Đông' by Như Quỳnh

2025-10-17T11:00:00+07:00

There is a certain timelessness to the song ‘Người Tình Mùa Đông’ by Như Quỳnh, especially in the visuals of its very first performance. For generations of Vietnamese listeners, ‘Người Tình Mùa Đông’ is an icon in the hall of fame of Vietnamese music, but as I have come to discover, the melody that Vietnamese know as ‘Người Tình Mùa Đông’ has lived a life much richer and more transcendent than it might appear.

In recent years, the music industry’s dynamics have shifted towards fandom and celebrityhood, giving performers more ownership over their music and forming a direct channel for them to communicate their artistry to fans. A song today is, more often than not, closely linked with its performing artist rather than its writer, because in many cases, they are the same person.

For much of Vietnam’s modern music timeline, however, the reverse was more common. Across the 1980s and 1990s, songs, first and foremost, were the creations of composers; and each song could have myriad versions performed by different singers, all vying for the earshot of listeners. My parents identify their favorite tracks by who wrote it, and would argue fervently over which vocalists had the best rendition. Composers were so revered for their artistry and personal style that at times their music could grow to become distinctive genres that are even alive and well today, such as nhạc Trịnh Công Sơn or nhạc Phạm Duy. It’s rather comical to think of a Ryan Tedder, Teddy Park, or Hứa Kim Tuyền anthology CD released today.

Như Quỳnh in the 1990s in her 20s. Photo via Nhạc Xưa.

One thing that my parents, and likely many listeners from their generation, would agree on, however, is nobody can sing ‘Người Tình Mùa Đông’ quite like Như Quỳnh. In an era of music when singers were often seen as mere technical executors rather than creators, the enduring impression that this particular version has etched onto our collective consciousness is a testament to Như Quỳnh’s star power, right from the song's very first debut performance.

A wintry love note not about winter

The title ‘Người Tình Mùa Đông’ could be loosely translated as ‘Winter Paramour.’ The song appeared for the first time in 1994 in the Christmas special of a variety music show by diaspora entertainment studio Asia. The rest of this festive set list naturally featured many Vietnamese versions of famous Noël songs, including ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham! and the Spanish-language classic ‘Feliz Navidad.’

The title ‘Người Tình Mùa Đông’ seems a little hyperbolic at first glance, because the Vietnamese winter is typically much less melodramatic than that of the western world. Apart from some northern provinces where the weather does get chilly towards the end of the year (but no snow), our tropical climate renders winter in the rest of Vietnam rather impotent, hardly romantic enough to inspire seasonal love songs. In reality, the lyrics that composer Anh Bằng wrote use winter as a metaphor for the chilly demeanor with which the love interest treats the male narrator in his reminiscence. “Đường vào tim em ôi băng giá / How icy is the road to your heart,” the man laments as the rainy weather takes him back to those days with her. “Trái tim em muôn đời lạnh lùng. Hỡi ôi trái tim mùa đông / Your heart is forever chilly. O wintry heart,” the song ends on a rather bittersweet note.

‘Người Tình Mùa Đông’ by Như Quỳnh, 1994.

This story of male yearning and missed connection is only apparent if one pays attention to the lyrics, because the performance is anything but forlorn. Như Quỳnh walks out on an ivory stage embellished with Christmas trees and white balloons, and starts singing. The music is bouncy and festive, and the melancholy lyrics take on a rather playful and tongue-in-cheek quality, when delivered by Như Quỳnh, as she smiles and sways in place. The song becomes a self-aware assertion from the female perspective, thanks to the Vietnamese language’s flexible pronouns — it’s as if she’s coyly affirming “Yes, it’s not easy to win my affection, what about it?”

The 1980s outfit that has become iconic. Photo via Nhạc Xưa.

This was Như Quỳnh’s first stage performance since she moved abroad; she was 23 years old in the tape recording. Even though she had performed publicly before in Saigon and even won singing competitions, many still single out this performance as the defining moment in Quỳnh’s career. I attribute this to the song’s broad appeal, to viewers both male and female, young and old. Its lyrics are underscored by nostalgia, a key quality that resonates with Vietnamese communities abroad and older fans. Male listeners are obviously drawn to the ingénue image she put on for the live recording; perhaps she reminded them of a similar crush during their formative years. Female viewers, on the other hand, could connect with the confidence and self-assertion in the performance.

Như Quỳnh (left) in a press event for her liveshow Xuân Yêu Thương in 2023. Photo via Thanh Niên.

She’s fun, dresses well, and is literally glowing. The makeup and fashion are flattering, and the singing is naturalistic and not overly indulgent in vocal acrobatics. In the performance, Như Quỳnh wears a red peacoat, a beige pleated miniskirt, black tights and a black beret — a look that has become so iconic that she even recreated it for her comeback concert in Hanoi in 2018. While this ensemble evoked heavy 1980s influence and might look a little dated if seen during the 2010s, it appears surprisingly in place today, given the resurgence of appreciation for retro aesthetics in the 2020s across multiple cultural disciplines from music, cinema to fashion.

The melody that transcends languages

‘Rouge’ by Naomi Chiaki, 1977.

That memorable live stage might have been the first time many Vietnamese heard ‘Người Tình Mùa Đông,’ but few are aware that this melody actually originated from Japan under the name ルージュ (Rouge/Lipstick), written by singer-songwriter Miyuki Nakajima for veteran singer Naomi Chiaki. ‘Rouge’ was released as a single in 1977 for Chiaki’s album, but it underperformed compared to the rest of the tracks. If ‘Người Tình Mùa Đông’ sings of regret and unfulfilled relationships of a man, ‘Rouge’ is the reminiscence of a woman who left home in search of a long-lost lover and had to find temporary work as a bar hostess. Her lover is nowhere to be found, and she reflects on how the journey has changed her, yet her sakura-color lipstick remains the same.

‘Vulnerable Woman’ by Faye Wong, 1992.

Still, ‘Rouge’ doesn’t have a direct link to ‘Người Tình Mùa Đông,’ as a middle evolution stage was involved. If you were an enthusiastic follower of Hong Kong TVB soap operas in the early 1990s, you would find the tune familiar as it appeared in the series Đại Thời Đại (The Greed of Man), albeit as a whole different song by Faye Wong. Wong’s Cantonese version, titled ‘容易受傷的女人’ (Vulnerable Woman), was recorded in 1992 and included in the series as an interlude song. Musically, ‘Vulnerable Woman’ is a heart-wrenching ballad of a woman expressing insecurity in a rocky relationship, urging her lover to stay with her.

The cover of the Rouge album by Naomi Chiaki where the titular song appeared for the first time.

The compilation CD that includes ‘Người Tình Mùa Đông.’

‘Vulnerable Woman’ is one of the most successful tracks of Faye Wong's album Coming Home.

The TV drama turned out to be widely successful, achieving top ratings in Hong Kong that year and spreading to neighboring countries. ‘Vulnerable Woman’ went on to win Song of the Year soon after, and spawned a smorgasbord of covers across Asia in many languages — including Vietnamese, in the form of ‘Người Tình Mùa Đông.’ Singaporean band Tokyo Square released an English-language version, ‘That Is Love.’ Burmese singer Aye Chan May recorded a version called ‘တစ်စစီကျိုးပဲ့နေတယ်’ (Broken Apart). It shape-shifted in Turkey as dance track ‘8.15 Vapuru’ by Yonca Evcimik. There are also numerous other versions in Vietnamese, Mandarin Chinese, Thai, Khmer and Khmu. The melody might stay largely unchanged, but it's fascinating to witness how it reinvent itself in completely different genres: the Turkish version is the most different with an Ace of Base-esque reggae influence, while the Singaporean rendition remains faithful to Faye Wong's instrumentation. Regardless of how similar or transformed the arrangements are, the lyrics are almost always different.

‘Broken Apart’ by Aye Chan May, 1996.

These translations might seem random, but they fit right in with the prevailing cultural trends at the time, where Asian singers were localizing their favorite foreign songs left and right. Japan looked to the west for cover inspirations, resulting in fascinating artefacts like Hideki Saijo’s rendition of ‘Careless Whispers.’ Hong Kong, on the other hand, went through a Japanese Wave in the 1980s and 1990s, giving rise to a hits like ‘尋愛’ (Searching for Love) by Anita Mui, a cover of ‘Plastic Love’ by Mariya Takeuchi. Vietnam was enamoured by Cantonese media, especially music and TVB dramas, in the 1990s, so songs by Andy Lau, Shirley Kwan, and of course, Faye Wong, were making their way into the cultural landscape of Vietnam en masse. Sometimes, the adaptation cascade does a funny thing, resulting in the cross-cultural evolution of ‘Người Tình Mùa Đông’ from ‘Vulnerable Woman’ from ‘Rouge.’ If someone tells me now that ‘Rogue’ was a cover of something else, I swear I will lose my mind.

In Hội An, Artist Nguyễn Quốc Dân Breathes New Life Into Scrap Materials

2025-10-12T11:00:00+07:00

The several dozen family altars that formed a hodgepodge pile had each been abandoned in graveyards. For many, this would make them extremely inauspicious. But to artist Nguyễn Quốc Dân, they are perfect for making art.

Cemeteries provide the renowned artist with much of the material he needs for his particular style of art, dubbed Tái Sinh-ism, or Taisinism in English. This was evident when Saigoneer visited his 2,000-square-meter home and workshop in Hội An. Empty bottles, jugs, jars, nets, blankets, bags, electronic casings, pipes, tubes, wires, fabrics, flooring, decor, and decorations: The castoffs of capitalism run amok populate the property.

We had been ushered inside after the rambunctious pack of friendly dogs was pushed away from the gate guarding the inconspicuous frontage on the outskirts of town. Dân, immediately identifiable by his beard and long hair, was busy overseeing a new construction project on the site, so Huỳnh Huy stepped in. During a planned bicycle trip across Southeast Asia, beginning in his hometown of Bến Tre, Huy stopped at the Recycling Workshop whose mission and philosophy enticed him to stay for more than a year. He has the scars on his hands to prove his dedication to the art and was the perfect person to explain Tái Sinh-sim to us.

Before showing us around the workshop, Huy shared the ideal place for one of Dân’s pieces to be displayed by way of a question: “What is the most secure building in the world?” Unable to provide the correct answer, he responded: “The UN building. Imagine the world’s leaders sitting around one of these statues.”

Denim jeans shaped and glued into the form of seated Buddha; a television case melted into the warped visage of a helmet or military mask; a hotel duvet contorted and secured in the shape of a cloaked figure: picturing these works beside the world’s most powerful leaders reveals both Dân’s ambitions for his art and the importance of the message he aims to convey. The cavernous metal space that Huy led us through was built according to Dân’s specifications and only completed after several construction teams called it impossible. Large circular doors at the front and back can be swung open and closed to cast crescent moon shadows.

While Huy pointed out various statues, often asking us to guess what they were made from, Dân appeared to show off the building’s most astounding element. A sunken floor in the middle of the room contains a living tree, while the roof directly above it features a large skylight. Dân has devised some unseen system so that water on the roof can pour in, perfectly mimicking a moderate rainstorm. Dân commenced the downpour, removed his pants, and began making frantic music on the various metal drums, plastic bottles, and discarded surfaces beside the tree. Possessed with an insatiable energy, his solo seemed to stretch on indefinitely while Huy explained how the surrounding art pieces were made.

Many of the works are created by applying “intense heat” to items reclaimed from trash piles and landfills. Time is precious as the melted compounds harden rapidly, so Dân and his team must work quickly to create the intended shapes, often with the support of mannequins and other garbage serving as molds. The process is dangerous, and Huy claims one of the people who helps make them has damaged his fingertips to the point he can now grip burning material. Meanwhile, the team frequently forgoes the face masks useful for protecting against toxic fumes because they are simply too hot to wear. But according to Dân, an artist must be willing to suffer for the work as much as the soul of the material has suffered.

“How much do you think this bottle costs when full, and how much when empty?” Huy asked while lifting a familiar detergent bottle. The answer: VND35,000 full, VND15,000 empty, and then a fee to have it disposed of. The value of items society perceives as worthless trash, compared to what we are paying for, was our entry point into the philosophy of Tái Sinh-ism. This “Rebirth-sim” is not recycling, which aims to give a second life to materials that are of a lower financial value, while up-cycling is the same idea, with a slight reconfiguring of economics. In contrast, Tái Sinh-ism is a complete transformation that elevates items to works of art that cannot be reduced to monetary value, regardless of auction prices or sales receipts. The materials’ lifespans are not extended, but stretched towards eternity with an aim of ensuring they never return to a landfill.

Landfills play a central role in Tái Sinh-ism. Dân spent his childhood scouring trash with his mother, the pittance offered by salvaged garbage providing for their basic needs. He continues to visit these landfills, albeit with a different mindset. Cemeteries also provide much of his material because unscrupulous individuals looking to dump items illegally appreciate the seclusion and taboo that surround them. Many of the mannequins that Dân uses for his molds and for a towering statue of mannequins were found in cemeteries, for example. And as Dân’s reputation has spread, “trash finds us,” Huy said, noting how supporters will often arrive with various scraps.

Dân resting in a landfill. Photo via Nguyễn Quốc Dân's Instagram page.

While Dân’s work and lifestyle may sound wacky, he is not the art world outsider he may sound to be. His creative talents were recognized at a young age, and he received generous assistance to study at the HCMC University of Fine Arts, where he studied and practiced more conventional contemporary styles. Understanding the foundations, traditions, and aims of these works, while amassing trash materials in his rented Saigon room, led him to an artistic epiphany. Dân believes that all art must address the questions of the day. The questions that elicited cubism and modernism, for example, have been addressed by many practitioners over the past decades, while the question of what to do with the mind-boggling amount of trash our species churns out remains unaddressed. Tái Sinh-ism is his response to that question.

Dân’s experience in navigating the art world, to say nothing of his charisma, has surely helped him achieve a level of success. Quantified by social media followers, news coverage, or public shows, including a recent VCCA exhibition in Hanoi, he can be considered a well-known artist. This notoriety allows him to proselytize for Tái Sinh-ism, with curious locals and foreigners making a pilgrimage to his studio when in Hội An. Meanwhile, he provides classes and workshops for children to help them nurture their creative spirits while instilling at a young age a revolutionary approach to garbage.

Nguyễn Quốc Dân's exhibition at the VCCA. Photo via Hanoi Times.

You don’t need to be a full-throated convert to Tái Sinh-ism to take a trip to Dân’s workshop. He will welcome anyone, and if you go in with an open mind, you are likely to depart with a new way of thinking that will return any time you see a pile of trash on the street or left over after a museum gallery opening. At the very least, you will appreciate the genuine kindness and humble eccentricity of Dân and his marvelous works of art.

What Shipwrecks Can Teach Us About Vietnam's Centuries-Old Maritime History

2025-10-05T21:00:00+07:00

Deep beneath the ocean surface, colorful ceramic fragments have been scattered and stacked upon one another for centuries. Some remain whole, others broken, many still covered with corals and ocean dust. Once precious commodities, these pieces have become time capsules, carried into the Vietnamese waters by ships that never reached their destinations. What stories might these centuries-old ceramic artifacts hold about Vietnam’s connection with surrounding kingdoms?

Map: Six ancient ships excavated in Vietnamese waters. Image via Vietnam National Museum of History.

In the 1990s, at least six shipwrecks were found and excavated in Vietnamese territorial waters — from both the Gulf of Thailand and the East Sea — through efforts by Vietnamese and international archaeologists and authorities. Hundreds of thousands of artifacts from each shipwreck were discovered, studied, preserved, and now held in different major museum collections in Vietnam as well as abroad. Today, a permanent collection of “Asian ceramics,” found from shipwrecks dating from the 9^th century until the 18^th centuries, are now on display at the Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History.

Installation view of permanent collection ‘Asian ceramics’ at Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History.

One of the first factors that captures a viewer’s attention in a ceramic piece, perhaps, is its colors and patterns. We begin tracing the details: who or what is depicted, where this piece might have come from, or what purpose it once served. Such questions lead us to imagine the lives of those who could afford and own these expensive-looking objects, perhaps belonging only to wealthy families or individuals in the past.

Yet, more than just old commodities or museum displays, these shipwrecked ceramics tell us a bigger story of Vietnam in the centuries-old maritime trade, long before the arrival of the first Europeans. They revealed Vietnam’s connections with neighboring kingdoms and positioned the country within the East and Southeast Asian trade routes and beyond, offering a broader perspective of Vietnam as a part of both art history and global trade history.

Installation view of permanent collection ‘Asian ceramics’ at Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History.

Beginning with artifacts from Vietnam itself, a collection of high-quality Chu Đậu ceramics was found from the 15^th-century Chàm island shipwreck in Quảng Nam. It includes an estimated total of 240,000 artifacts, including ceramics of foreign origins, excavated over three years from 1997 to 2000. Chàm Island (Cù Lao Chàm), which belongs to Hội An, occupied a significant position along the Southeast Asian trade routes. Originally produced in Hải Dương, Chu Đậu ceramics flourished in the 15^th century and are renowned for their fine lines and decorative motifs of flora, animals, landscapes, and folk-inspired themes. The pieces found in the Chàm island shipwreck were primarily blue-and-white wares: housewares, containers, utensils for eating and drinking, and items used for religious ceremonies. Designed specifically for the overseas market, the ceramic pieces highlight both the kingdom’s development of export ceramics and participation in international trade.

Plates. Polychrome-glazed stoneware. Chu Đậu ceramics. Vietnam, 15th century.

Details of Chu Đậu ceramics. Vietnam, 15th century.

An important collection from the shipwreck features “Chăm pottery,” as described by the museum text: glazed ceramic crafted by the Chăm people or using Chăm techniques within the Champa kingdom (present-day Central Vietnam), dating from 2^nd to 17^th centuries. These objects seem to have been overlooked in Chăm history, compared to the more prominent religious statues in museum collections. The artifacts on display include brown-glazed, green-glazed stoneware dishes, bowls, and ewers. Highlights on display is a large dish decorated with Chăm script along its edges, alongside large jars with floral motifs.

Plate. “Cham pottery”. Vietnam, 15th century.

“Cham pottery” from the permanent collection of Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History.

Champa’s pottery production and maritime trade have flourished since the 10^th century, maintaining strong networks with the Philippines and other Southeast Asian kingdoms. Although production declined significantly due to the fall of Vijaya state and the invasion by the northern kingdom of Đại Việt in 1471 (during the Later Lê dynasty), the Champa kingdom played a significant role as a destination and waypoint by merchant boats from surrounding kingdoms in Southeast Asia and beyond, even serving as intermediaries between Đại Việt and the Malay Archipelago within the Muslim trade networks.

Details of “Cham pottery” from the permanent collection of Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History.

Off the southwest coast, towards the Gulf of Thailand, the maritime trade with the Ayutthaya Kingdom (present-day Thailand) is evident in the Hòn Dầm Island shipwreck in Kiên Giang in the 15^th century. A large quantity of Thai ceramics, including celadon stoneware and brown-glazed pieces, was produced by kilns in Sawankhalok and Sukhothai. On display are celadon stoneware of patterned dishes, elephant-shaped lamp stands, as well as an elephant figurine with soldiers, partially attached with coral remains. In addition, iron-brown and white-glazed stoneware includes Kinnari and elephant-shaped ewers, covered jars with patterns, and bowls decorated with lotus and chrysanthemum motifs, with petals spreading elegantly across the surfaces.

Bowls. Iron-brown and white-glazed stoneware. Thailand, 15th century.

Covered jar. Iron-brown and white-glazed stoneware. Thailand, 15th century.

Kinnari-shaped ewer (left) and Elephant-shaped ewer (right). Iron-brown and white-glazed stoneware. Thailand, 15th century.

Elephant-shaped lamp stand (left) and War elephant figurine (right). Celadon stoneware. Thailand, 15th century.

Details of a stemmed dish. Celadon stoneware. Thailand, 15th century.

Continuing along the timeline, the largest quantity of 18^th-century Chinese porcelain was found from the Cà Mau shipwreck, dating to the Yongzheng reign (1723–1735) of the Qing Dynasty and excavated between 1998 and 1999. Most of the pieces were blue-and-white and multi-color wares produced at Jingdezhen kilns in Jiangxi and many from Guangdong. Their decorations commonly depict Chinese landscapes and human figures, and the assemblage includes plates, bowls, teapots, tea cups, kendi, snuff bottles, etc.

Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. Qing China, Yongzheng era (1723–1735).

In addition, many pieces feature European motifs. A notable example is a plate decorated along the edge with sea wave patterns, with images of two men and another man walking with a buffalo. According to Nguyễn Đình Chiến’s article “Đồ gốm sứ trong các con tàu đắm ở vùng biển Việt Nam” (Ceramics from the shipwrecks off the coast of Vietnam), the plate depicts a landscape of a fisherman village in Deshima — an artificial island served as a Dutch trading post in Nagasaki, Japan in the early mid mid-17th century — showing a sand hill, with a lighthouse, a church, and houses by the fishing boats appearing behind. This indicates that similar wares, including milk bottles and wine jugs, were made to fill the demand from the European market at the time.

Plate. Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. Qing China, Yongzheng era (1723–1735).

One standout piece from this shipwreck is an artifact composed of stacked Chinese blue-and-white tea cups, referred to by the museum as the 18^th-century “Sea sculpture.” Despite its small size, it embodies both fragility and endurance, surviving against the underwater pressure and through layers of time. Its mass of wrecked and broken remains fused together. The positioning of the cups suggests how such wares may have been packed within containers during their journey across the sea. Although the ship’s routes and destinations remain unknown, the shipwreck’s location in Cà Mau waters suggests that it may have been heading south from China towards the Malay Archipelago, before continuing across the oceans to other continents.

‘Sea sculpture.’ Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. Qing China, Yongzheng era (1723–1735).

Despite the tragic fate of these ships and the commodities they carried, their remains serve as significant evidence for archeologists and historians studying Vietnam’s maritime trade since the dynastic periods, which is often overlooked nowadays in the overall history. Ceramic artifacts, once part of the expensive global products, carry aesthetic values, traces of life across continents. Shipwrecked ceramics offer an alternative lens of understanding interconnectedness between art and other socio-political dynamics and trade histories. They move beyond land-centric narratives and highlight Vietnam’s strategic location between East and Southeast Asia within the global trade, even amid social and political upheavals, and the rise and fall of kingdoms.

The permanent collection “Asian Ceramics” is on view at Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History. More information can be found on the museum’s official website.

Local Designers Create Entire Family of Mascots for Vietnam's 63 Provinces, Cities

2025-09-29T10:00:00+07:00

If given the opportunity, what would each of Vietnam's provinces select as a mascot?

Saigoneer has pondered this question before and discussed the fact Vietnam doesn't have an active mascot tradition similar to Japan's. While this is not yet a reality, art agency Monstio has just given vision to our dream in the form of a mascot stamp collection project that assigns a unique character to each of the pre-merger provinces. To attract attention to their brand identity and project label work, the team has released the Mát-xờ-cốt 63 project on their Facebook page.

Based on the team's research and exploration, each mascot nods to a well-known element of the province. Inspiration comes from culinary items, such as Cà Mau's crabs, Bình Thuận's dragonfruit and Bắc Giang's lychee as well as architectural images including Kon Tum's ethnic minority homes and Kiếp Bạc Temple in Hải Dương. Referenced cultural activities include Đờn ca tài tử in Bạc Liêu and Bình Định's unique martial arts. Some of the province mascots are illustrated via their natural features, flora and fauna including Cao Bằng waterfalls, Lào Cai's famed mountain peak, Bình Dương's cherished sao trees and Đồng Tháp's lotus. A few historical events are also referenced, such as military victories in Điện Biên and Quảng Trị.

While not available as actual stamps, they are a beautiful digital collection that allows us to reflect on the vibrant diversity of the nation. Moreover, in their cataloguing of many now-merged provinces, they represent a time capsule of sort that can engender nostalgia as we become accustomed to new boundaries and names.

Have a full look at the collection below:

Wartime Sketches, Stamps, Typography Transcending Time in ‘Collection+’

2025-09-17T16:00:00+07:00

Fragments of history, whether through imagery or text, often feel distant in time, yet so familiar when encountered visually. Combat sketches, postage stamps, and typography from propaganda posters invite viewers to ask: how do they speak to today’s generation, living half a century after the war, and what do they reveal about our collective memory of Vietnam today?

Known for its extensive collection of wartime propaganda art, Dogma Collection has launched Collection+, a new initiative that invites members of the arts community to engage with its archive alongside their own collection. For the debut exhibition, running until November 2, 2025, combat sketches, postage stamps and typographic materials are selected and presented by Thanh Uy Art Gallery (Hanoi), Bưu Hoa (Saigon) and Lưu Chữ (Saigon). The collaboration doesn’t simply put historical materials on view, but repositions these fragments from the past in a contemporary setting, holding a dialogue with today’s viewers. In doing so, the past that seems far away is now reframed through the familiarity of Vietnamese collective memory, reminding viewers how deeply wartime visual culture continues to shape the present.