Under the shared heartbeat of “129BPM,” the dancers channeled their emotions through movement, navigating between individuality and collectivity both on and off stage. Extending beyond Vietnamese audiences, the piece has now been presented on an international platform at George Town Festival 2025 in Penang, Malaysia, marking a significant milestone for Vietnamese contemporary hip-hop performance on the international stage.

After two successful performance nights in Saigon and Hanoi, the performers of H2Q Dance Company brought “129BPM” — a contemporary hip-hop dance theater work — to George Town Festival 2025 (GTF 2025) in Penang, Malaysia. Originally titled as “129BPM: Động Phách Tách Kén” and co-produced with the Goethe-Institut Hồ Chí Minh City in 2024, the new touring production took place at the historic Dewan Sri Pinang theater from August 4 to 5 2025, presented and managed by MORUA, with travel sponsored by AirAsia and partial support from Đối South. Directed and choreographed by Bùi Ngọc Quân, the performance featured dancers Nguyễn Duy Thành, Lâm Duy Phương (Kim), Lương Thái Sơn (Sơn Lương), Nguyễn Ngọc (Mini Phantom), Bùi Quang Huy (Snoop Gee), Nguyễn Đỗ Quốc Khanh (Nega), and Vũ Tiến Thọ (Joong), alongside stage design by Mara-Madeleine Pieler, and live music by Tiny Giant (LinhHafornow and Tomes) and Nguyễn Đan Dương.

“129BPM” performance at Dewan Sri Pinang. Photos courtesy of George Town Festival.

The journey of “129BPM” to Penang began when Producer Red Nguyễn Hải Yến attended a forum for stage producers in Asia through GTF 2024, which highlighted the dialogue between heritage spaces and contemporary performance practices. Recognizing the potential of staging works in Penang’s historic buildings, old alleyways, and theaters — an atmosphere unique to the festival — she decided to submit the 129BPM project to the festival organizers, and received an official invitation to perform at the festival.

“129BPM refers not only to the rhythm of music, but it’s also a heartbeat — a palpitating heartbeat that shows our body in agitation, anxiety, as well as in thrill and fervor,” shared  Choreographer Assistant and Stage Manager Lyon Nguyễn. Setting against the backdrop of rapid social changes that Vietnamese youths are facing, this raises a central question on self-identity: “Who are we in the middle of these changes with regard to our past and heritage?” Using hip-hop dance as a shared “language,” performers from backgrounds came together to create a collective voice while maintaining their own uniqueness, and move under one beat of 129BPM.

“129BPM” performance at Dewan Sri Pinang. Photos courtesy of George Town Festival.

Hip-hop is often associated with dance battles, where dancers only have limited time to showcase their skills and charisma. However, “129BPM” shifted the audience’s focus to the raw emotions and vulnerability of dancers on stage, expressed with their strongest movements and synchronization with one another. Developed and performed over the span of 75 minutes, this work challenges the dancers’ endurance, physically and emotionally. Dancers are placed in conditions where they must let their inner feelings surface: from joy to pain, from happiness to sorrow. At the same time, this framework also opens up new opportunities for experimentation: expressing emotions through movements, and navigating between one’s self identity and collective creation. While audience reactions to “129BPM” are diverse in Vietnam, in Penang the response was especially vibrant, with the audience spontaneously joining the performers in a post-show cypher — a hip-hop term for the circle dancers form, taking turns stepping into the center to dance — which embodied the spirit of creating unity and shared rhythm across differences.

“129BPM” performance at Dewan Sri Pinang. Photos courtesy of George Town Festival.

“Puzzles” workshop, led by the performers under the guidance of Director and Choreographer Bùi Ngọc Quân and Lyon Nguyễn, took place a few days before the live performances. Designed as a guided jam session, it invited local participants to explore improvisation, physical storytelling, and collective rhythm. Extending beyond the collective work among the performers themselves, the workshop opened up to a wider community, bringing together participants from adolescent to 75 years old, both experienced dancers and beginners. More than just a workshop, it became a space for cultural exchange, interaction, also community building — the very spirit that 129BPM hoped to share.

“Puzzles” workshop in Penang, Malaysia (30 July 2025). Photos courtesy of Tilda61 Media.

Bùi Ngọc Quân, who returned to Vietnam after more than 25 years with Les Ballets C de la B in Belgium, “129BPM” did not look to direct references to Vietnamese heritage through sound or imagery. Instead, its identity emerges from the lived experience of being in Vietnam: working closely with the dancers, understanding their desires, and allowing individuality and creativity to shape the process. As he notes, the work carries a distinctly Vietnamese sensibility “because all of us are allowed to comfortably be Vietnamese.” This perspective highlights the significance not only of what appears on stage, but also of the collaborative process that unfolds behind the scenes.

Director and Choreographer Bùi Ngọc Quân at “Puzzles” workshop. Photo courtesy of Tilda61 Media.

All team members of 129BPM at George Town Festival 2025.

“For independent theater works without government funding or access to costly infrastructures for ticketed performances, participating in festivals has become a key strategy to sustain the life of the work, while also serving as an entry point to introduce new hip-hop performances and Vietnamese theater to the world,” Producer Red Nguyễn Hải Yến told Saigoneer in Vietnamese, when asked about the significance of presenting an independent Vietnamese piece on an festival stage to new audiences in a country with different social and political contexts. “Sustaining the practice of independent artist collectives plays an essential role in shaping and developing a nation’s theatrical landscape.”

“129BPM” performance at Dewan Sri Pinang. Photos courtesy of George Town Festival.

More information and recap of “129BPM” performance at George Town Festival 2025 (Penang, Malaysia) can be found here on this Facebook page.

How did Vietnamese artists navigate the complex tides of social and political changes, and mark their own position in the art world as the “Others” during interwar Paris — which was celebrated as the “City of Lights,” yet also a stage for both colonial propaganda and a ground for anti-colonial resistance?

In the 1920s-1940s, despite the looming threats of war and the rise of fascism, Paris remained as the world capital of art. Artists from across the globe flocked into the city in search for recognition with breakthroughs in their careers. Vietnamese artists were no exception, as they also arrived in the city with hope and ambition. Today, romanticized Vietnamese scenes painted in silk or oil by artists trained from École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine (EBAI) are widely recognized among the Vietnamese public, especially as such works increasingly appear in international auction houses at record prices. Yet, their stories, artistic contributions and positions within the peak of the French colonial empire were often overlooked in the broader narrative of global art histories.

Works by notable Vietnamese artists, along other renowned Asian artists, are presented in “City of Others: Asian Artists in Paris, 1920s-1940s” at National Gallery Singapore; this is the first major exhibition in Southeast Asia to feature Asian artists, their artistic contributions and influences as the center of focus within the vibrant Parisian art scene during the interwar period. Other than highlighting how artists navigated through the western art world while incorporating their own cultural identities into their art, the exhibition also offers a critical view towards Paris, not only as a vibrant hub of artistic innovation, but also the heart of the French colonial empire. In the case of Vietnamese artists, their arrival and exposure in France were the result of the colonial system and hierarchy, which shaped their experiences differently from their Japanese or Chinese counterparts at the time.

Installation view of “Theatre of the Colonies” in “City of Others: Asian Artists in Paris, 1920s-1940s”, National Gallery Singapore.

The exhibition features works by the first Vietnamese artists who built their careers in Paris in the 1930s: Lê Phổ (1907–2001), Mai Trung Thứ (1906–1980) and Vũ Cao Đàm (1908–2000), alongside a rare work by Lê Thị Lựu (1911–1988). Together, they were regarded as the pioneers of Vietnamese modern art abroad. Also included are works by other EBAI graduates, such as Phạm Hậu (1905–1994), Nguyễn Phan Chánh (1892–1984), Tô Ngọc Vân (1906–1954), Lê Văn Đệ (1906–1966), etc. Importantly, the exhibition expands its narratives beyond well-known artists by featuring unnamed and uncredited Vietnamese artisans and lacquer workers in Paris by the 1930s, whose contributions have been overshadowed in art historical records.

Preface

The “Preface” of the exhibition opens with a series of self-portraits by Asian artists, including works by Mai Trung Thứ and Lê Phổ. Mai Trung Thứ lights a cigarette and gazes directly at the viewer, while Lê Phổ returns the same direct stare, though in a more formal manner. Albeit not a dominant genre in Vietnamese art at the time, self-portraiture offered a rare expression of self-awareness and artistic assertion. Rendered with watercolor on Asian silk and pencil sketches on paper, the two portraits employ fine brushwork in a western realist style. These mediums and techniques reflect the cultural hybridity shaped by the EBAI, which introduced French academic training while embracing Vietnamese local traditions. Although personal in appearance, these portraits subtly project the reality of colonial intervention, shaped by an institution under the French administration, and hint at the layered identities formed under the colonial system.

Left: Mai Trung Thứ. Autoportrait à la cigarette (Self Portrait with Cigarette), 1940. Colors on silk. Collection of Mai Lan Phuong.
Right: Lê Phổ. Sketch for a Self Portrait, 1938. Pencil on paper. Collection of Alain le Kim.

Workshop to the World

In Paris, the taste for Asian art was already well established before the 1920s. Lacquer was considered a luxurious material, prized for its refined surface despite its demanding and labor-intensive production process. The rise of Art Déco in the 1920s — a modern, streamlined and popular aesthetic in art and design — further fueled French interest in the “exotic” imagined visions of Asia. This appetite shaped the way Asian art was received, consumed, and displayed in the west. Lacquer work ‘Paysage tonkinois’ (Tonkinese Landscape, c. 1930) by Lê Phổ, which is rarely seen today as he is better known for his silk paintings; and ‘Family in a Forest’ (c. 1940) by Phạm Hậu, whose compositions often feature meticulously rendered details in gold leaf, reflect the mutual influence between the Art Déco movement in Paris and the emerging modern lacquer movement in Vietnam.

Left: Lê Phổ. Paysage tonkinois (Tonkinese Landscape), c. 1930. Lacquer on wood, 5 hinged panel screen; mounted on wooden panel with gold leaf design (likely later). Private American collection
Middle: Historical records of Vietnamese artisans who worked at Jean Dunand’s studio (up until 1930).
Right: Phạm Hậu. Family in a Forest, c. 1940. Lacquer on wood; 3 panels. Collection of Sunseal Asia Limited.

The exhibition also brings attention to uncredited Vietnamese artisans and lacquer workers living in Paris up until the 1930s, many of whom worked in the studio of renowned Art Deco designer Jean Dunand (1877–1942). During this time, several lacquerers were placed under surveillance due to suspected political activity. A list documenting these artisans — including their names, places of origin, and Parisian addresses — were found in the Archives nationales d’outre-mer (the French national archives concerning the colonies), which oversaw the migrants from French colonies, offering rare insight into the overlooked lives and labor behind the flourishing lacquer demand in Paris.

Jean Dunand. La forêt (Forest), 1930. Gold and silver lacquer and hinges; 12 panels, total 300 x 600 cm. Collection of Mobilier National. Image courtesy of Mobilier National; photo by Isabelle Bideau, GME-7196-000.

Theatre of the Colonies

“Theatre of the Colonies” further highlights Vietnamese artists’ first exposure to the art world during the 1931 International Colonial Exposition, where an enormous replica of Angkor Wat was constructed and pavilions were built for the French empire to showcase its achievements and benefits from the colonies at that time. Works by Vietnamese artists, mostly graduates from the EBAI, were exhibited at the pavilions.

Installation view of “Theatre of the Colonies” at “City of Others: Asian Artists in Paris, 1920s-1940s”, National Gallery Singapore.

The works were highly regarded during the Colonial Exposition and other exhibitions in France at the time, and they were not painted in a deliberately “exotic” manner to serve the aesthetic demands for an “Asian” taste. Instead, we see refined depictions of daily life in earthy color tones, of women and villagers in their everyday activities through Nguyễn Phan Chánh’s works, which were rooted in his own rural upbringing, capturing the essence of the Vietnamese countryside. Meanwhile, Lê Phổ’s ‘L'Âge heureux’ (The Happy Age, 1930) suggests a nostalgia for a “golden age” of the Vietnamese past, showing children and women by the riverbank, most with their eyes cast downward, except for one young woman who stares directly at the viewer with an enigmatic gaze.

Lê Phổ. L'Âge heureux (The Happy Age), 1930. Oil on canvas, 126 x 177 cm. Private American collection.

Silk paintings by Nguyễn Phan Chánh and Nguyễn Khang.

France was at the peak of its empire with colonial propaganda in the early 20^th century, but it was also a ground for anti-colonial movements and revolutionaries. The exhibition includes materials from this resistance, such as cartoon sketches by Nguyễn Ái Quốc (Hồ Chí Minh), produced during his time working with the Parti communiste français (PCF, French Communist Party), which exposed the exploitative and oppressive realities of colonialism. These are shown alongside anti-colonial slogans, protest leaflets, and newspaper headlines, including one that reads: “Do not visit the Colonial Exposition.” According to the exhibition text, artists from the Surrealist group collaborated with the PCF to organize a counter-exhibition titled “The truth about the colonies,” although it attracted only around 4,000 visitors — a small number compared to the 8 million who attended the official Colonial Exposition.

Cartoon sketches, slogans, protest leaflets, and newspaper headlines by anti-colonial activists, including Nguyễn Ái Quốc (Hồ Chí Minh) at “City of Others: Asian Artists in Paris, 1920s-1940s.”

Sites of Exhibition

“Sites of Exhibition” explores the career peaks by Asian artists, in which they were seeking critical exposure and career advancement. Through time, artists adapted into the mainstream culture and continued developing their distinctive styles, while navigating expectations from both institutions and the market. A highlight is Lê Văn Đệ’s ‘L'Intérieur familial au Tonkin’ (The Family Interior in Tonkin, 1933), a post-impressionist portrayal of a traditional Vietnamese household rendered in a dreamy yet rustic tone. The painting was a success and later acquired by the French state. 

Lê Văn Đệ. L'Intérieur familial au Tonkin (The Family Interior in Tonkin), 1933. Oil on canvas.

Vũ Cao Đàm’s double-sided painting: one side is the silk painting ‘The Mandarin’ (1946), a formal ancestral portrait of an unidentified scholar; on the reverse, the gouache-on-paper painting ‘A Study of Two Young Women’ (1946) with contrasting image. This reveals his working process of reusing a previous sketch on paper for backing support of the silk painting.

Vũ Cao Đàm. Le Mandarin (The Mandarin), 1946. Ink and colour on silk. Private American collection.

Vũ Cao Đàm. A study of two young women, 1946. Gouache on paper. Private American collection.

Also on view are Lê Phổ’s luminous watercolor-on-silk paintings, including ‘Harmony in Green: The Two Sisters’ (1938). Compared to earlier works from the 1931 Colonial Exposition, these later pieces still depict daily life but carry a more romanticized tone, featuring idealized images of Vietnam through the main subjects of women and flowers. While it's difficult to confirm whether this shift was deliberate, it prompts reflection on how these artists negotiated personal expression and cultural identity under the pressure of a western market drawn to the “exotic.”

Lê Phổ. Harmony in Green: The Two Sisters, 1938. Ink and gouache on silk, 54 x 45 cm. Collection of National Gallery Singapore. Image courtesy of National Heritage Board, Singapore.

Aftermaths

In the “Aftermaths” section, the timeline moves toward the end of World War II and beyond, as France grappled with the trauma of war while anti-colonial and independence movements were sweeping across the world. Mai Trung Thứ’s film Documentaire sur la Conférence de Fontainebleau (Documentary of the Fontainebleau Conference, 1946), which documents Hồ Chí Minh’s visit to France that year when came to support the Vietnamese delegation negotiating for independence, prior to the outbreak of the First Indochina War. During his visit, Hồ Chí Minh met with many Vietnamese emigrants, including artists, some of whom were later viewed with suspicion because of their association with him.

Installation view of “Aftermaths” in “City of Others: Asian Artists in Paris, 1920s-1940s”, National Gallery Singapore.

Mai Trung Thứ. Documentaire sur la Conférence de Fontainebleau (Documentary of the Fontainebleau Conference), 1946. Film, transferred to digitised video, single-channel, black-and-white, 7 min 48 sec excerpt. Original, 42 min. Collection of Mai Lan Phuong.

Amidst an exhibition largely centered on works from the 1920s to 1940s, two contemporary pieces by Thảo Nguyên Phan engage in a quiet dialogue with the past. ‘Magical Bows (Lacquered Time),’ made in 2019, appears throughout the galleries, paying homage to the Vietnamese workers brought to France during World War I to lacquer airplane propellers for combat. Her other video work, ‘Reincarnations of Shadows (moving-image-poem),’ created in 2023 and still ongoing, is placed at the conclusion of the exhibition. It features Vietnamese sculptor Điềm Phùng Thị (1920–2002), who migrated to France in 1948 and later built her artistic career in the 1960s. The piece reflects on the migrant experience — not only the anxiety of arrival, but also, as the exhibition text notes, “the agonising complexity of return.”

Thảo Nguyên Phan & Đinh Văn Sơn (Lacquerer). Magical Bows (Lacquered Time), 2019. Lacquer, gold and silver leaf, eggshell and mother-of-pearl on wood. Collection of National Gallery Singapore.

Thảo Nguyên Phan. Reincarnations of Shadows (moving-image-poem), 2023-ongoing. Video, three-channels, each aspect ratio: 9:16, colour and sound (stereo), 16 min 50 sec. Collection of the artist. Courtesy of Galerie Zink.

After 1945, artists continued to migrate to Paris, though the city no longer held the same prestige it once did. For many Vietnamese and other Asian artists who remained, life was marked by displacement; caught between a distant homeland they could not easily return to and an environment where they faced marginalization and financial hardship. Being the “Others” in the so-called glamorous “City of Lights” came at the cost of uncertainty: a shifting sense of identity and belonging amid changing social and political tides. Yet their efforts and artistic contributions left a lasting imprint on the Parisian art scene and continue to shape a more interconnected global art history.

Photos courtesy of National Gallery Singapore.

“City of Others: Asian Artists in Paris, 1920s-1940s” is now on view until August 17, 2025 at Level 3, City Hall Wing of National Gallery Singapore. More information on the exhibition and admission can be found on this website.

We often encounter adventure tales in books and through adaptations of films or television. But what if a newly imagined adventure tale can also be written as an exhibition — one that maps strange-yet-familiar landscapes with a colonial history of exploration and exploitation?

Organized by Nguyen Art Foundation and curated by Thái Hà, “The year is XXXX” is an exhibition featuring works by Quỳnh Đồng, Nguyễn Phương Linh, Thảo Nguyên Phan and Danh Võ. Taking place at EMASI Nam Long and EMASI Vạn Phúc as two sequences of a curatorial narrative, the exhibition essay was written in the form of an adventure tale that follows a girl’s journey as she navigates different realities each time she wakes and sleeps. The audience steps into this imaginary adventure, through the lens of travel writings by missionaries and explorers in colonial Indochina, where places that we once thought were familiar become almost unrecognizable today.

According to the curatorial text, the exhibition “explores how adventure is used to invent fantastical fictions of foreign lands, but also as a strategy of escape from colonial subjugation.” Every six weeks, EMASI Vạn Phúc venue features rotating curations by different guest curators and guest artists, offering new alternative realities of the evolving curatorial narrative of the exhibition.

Installation view of “The year is XXXX” at Nguyen Art Foundation: EMASI Nam Long (left) and EMASI Vạn Phúc (right).

Upon arrival at EMASI Nam Long, audiences will encounter the first section titled Trùng mù (Endless, sightless), where Nguyễn Phương Linh’s single-channel video ‘Memory of the blind elephant’ (2016) appears under the dim red light, with black rubber mats laid down on the floor for the audience to sit on. Shifting the camera’s point of view between the perspectives of a human, animal, or machine, her work offers different views of the landscape and former colonial rubber plantation in Central Vietnam — a region that has been, and still continues to be, exploited.

The artist retraced the colonial-era travels of bacteriologist and explorer Alexandre Yersin (1863–1943), whose writings documented his expedition to the Central Highlands and his introduction of rubber plantations in Indochina. Elephants, culturally significant to daily life in Central Highlands, are believed to be colorblind, and the blindness mentioned here acts as a metaphor for the blindness to the destructive consequences of rapid urbanization and industrialization.

Nguyễn Phương Linh. Memory of the blind elephant, 2016. Single-channel video, color, sound. 00:14:00, loop.

Meanwhile, under the piercing brightness that cuts through our vision in a different room, ‘The Last Ride’ (2017) resembles the deconstructed elephant saddle in a minimalist form, made of industrial materials such as aluminium and steel. Here, the elephant was considered as a commodity, a mode of transportation, and a subject of exploitation that carried the weight of colonial ambition.

Nguyễn Phương Linh. The Last Ride, 2017. Aluminium pieces, plastic perspex, lights, glass and MDF pedestal. Installation dimensions variable.

Thảo Nguyên Phan’s ‘Voyages de Rhodes’ (2014–2017) presents a series of watercolor paintings attached to the wall by a single edge, allowing them to stand outwards in space. The artist painted directly over ancient pages of a 17^th-century text by Alexandre de Rhodes (1591–1660) on his 35 years of travel and missionary work, including in Indochina. At first glance, the images first appear to be from a colorful tropical paradise, with innocent children wearing school uniforms playing together, and their dreamy eyes remain half-opened.

Thảo Nguyên Phan. Voyages de Rhodes, 2014-2017. Watercolor on found book pages. Dimensions variable.

However, upon closer observation, the child's play starts turning into horror scenes: children playing “jump rope” over another child’s lifeless body, disembodied heads stuck on floating drums, a child standing on top of a ladder next to a tree while his head detached, etc. As the line between fiction and reality begins to blur, what appears as a dream of childhood innocence slowly reveals itself as something haunting, while the French text lying underneath remains obscure. This also prompts the question: are these beautifully fluid brushstrokes, yet disturbing images, meant to simply reflect the foreign gaze towards Vietnamese subjects, or to critique the cruelty of colonialism? De Rhodes’ writings resemble some remnants echoing from the past, while Thảo Nguyên Phan’s works unfold like some haunting fictional tales of colonial histories, ones that feel both long forgotten and completely detached from the histories that we were taught and our realities in the present.

Thảo Nguyên Phan. Voyages de Rhodes, 2014-2017. Watercolor on found book pages. Dimensions variable.

Towards the end of the first venue, visitors encounter Nguyễn Phương Linh’s work once again. ‘The Light’ (2018) is made of wooden fragments that appear to float, each carrying the dim lights in a dense fog filling up the room. The fragmented woods were collected from a Catholic church in Northern Vietnam; these physical remains and memories of a sacred place have turned into a new form and narrative. According to the exhibition text, these wooden panels have crossed continents before arriving at this exhibition, which traces “the routes once taken by missionaries whose journeys ended in martyrdom on this land.”

Nguyễn Phương Linh. The Light, 2018. Lights, wood panelling from a Catholic church in Northern Vietnam, smoke, clear perspex. Dimensions variable.

Danh Võ’s ‘2.2.1861’ (2009) stands quietly at the end of a corridor. The work itself is a handwritten letter, repeatedly written by the artist’s father Phụng Võ, several times a week. Despite not being fluent in French, he meticulously copied out the heartfelt farewell letter from Saint Jean-Théophane Vénard (1829–1861), a French catholic martyr, to his own father. The original letter was penned during Vénard’s final days before his execution in Northern Vietnam in 1861, under Emperor Tự Đức’s harsh campaign of anti-Christian persecution. One of the last lines reads: “Father and son will meet again in heaven. I, a small transient being, aim to leave first. Farewell.” The act of copying and repeating words through calligraphy in a language that he was not familiar with had become a form of prayer and a personal expression of commitment between the father and son.

Danh Võ. 2.2.1861, 2009. Handwritten letter by Phụng Võ. 29.85 x 20.96 cm.

Moving on to the exhibition venue at EMASI Vạn Phúc, we enter the next part of the adventure titled Gently Floating Away (Nhẹ nhàng trôi đi), into the utopia of hyper-real video works by Quỳnh Đồng. The artist borrowed from the art of painters trained from the l’École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine (Indochina School of Fine Arts), and projected them onto large-scale moving images. The lotus is often regarded as Vietnam’s national flower and is deeply embedded in folklore and visual culture. However, in ‘Lotus pond’ (2017), the lotuses now appear in oversized and independent entities, standing still under the rain and its soundscape, where time and space have become an infinite loop.

Quỳnh Đồng. Lotus pond, 2017. 3-channel video installation, 1920 x 1080 HD, color, sound. 00:50:00, loop.

Visitors will find themselves immersed in another landscape — this time, beneath the surface of dark water — through ‘Black sea and gold fish’ (2021). The work takes direct reference from Phạm Hậu’s lacquer painting ‘Nine carps in the Water’ (1939), with images and its practice deeply rooted in local tradition, yet formalized through a colonial gaze. In Quỳnh Đồng’s reimagined work, the fish and sea waves are no longer decorative motifs, but are now turned into bodies of Butoh dancers whose strange movements navigate through the darkness. Originating in post-war Japan, Butoh emerged as a rebellion against westernized ideals of performance. Here, the human figure is not considered as ornamental, but as a resistant presence.

Quỳnh Đồng. Black sea and gold fish, 2021. 3-channel video installation, 1920 x 1080 HD, color, sound. 00:08:13, loop.

As this is an evolving exhibition, there are rotating curations by guest curators and guest artists to be revealed every six weeks, until November 2025. Previously, the first one to be featured was Diane Severin Nguyen’s video installation ‘Tyrant Star’ (2019), curated by Bill Nguyễn. The work reflects on the construction of Vietnamese identity across past and present, shifting through the landscapes of the Southwest and Hồ Chí Minh City metropolitan with echoing folk verses (ca dao), the digital realm of a Vietnamese YouTuber singing ‘The Sound of Silence,’ to images of children in an orphanage.

Diane Severin Nguyen. Tyrant Star, 2019. Single-channel video, color, sound. 00:15:00, loop.

Meanwhile, the ongoing curation ‘Letters to the Cadres,’ curated by Joud Al-Tamimi, features photography works by Võ An Khánh, paintings by Trương Công Tùng, and installation by Tuấn Mami. Under the purple light, the space evokes an imagined “laboratory” — where soil, substances from a defunct military pharmaceutical factory, cactus, tree saps, micro-organisms, and human bodies converge. Here, the land bears witness to everyday resistance and war remnants, holding within it memories and unfinished stories shaped by colonial legacies and the enduring presence of the dead.

Installation view of “Letters to the Cadres” in “The year is XXXX” at Nguyen Art Foundation.

When one reads the exhibition title, perhaps the first questions that come to mind are “What year was XXXX?” and “What exactly happened?”. The unrevealed year might seem ambiguous, yet it opens up multiple possibilities of historical events and fictional stories that extend beyond the constraints of a certain chronological order. The exhibition text is presented in different paper stacks placed on the floor, which includes a timeline of Vietnamese history spanning from the year of 1640 to 1925, marking significant events from the imperial to colonial periods, many of which are reflected in the works on view.

Installation view of “The year is XXXX” at Nguyen Art Foundation.

Two parallel exhibition spaces: one is elusive, mysterious, and filled with ghostly presence; the other is where creatures are immediately present and ready to overwhelm and prey on any traveler who enters. Within realms that we once believed to be familiar, a deep sense of unfamiliarity emerges. Through language barriers, the distance between the past events and present-day realities, between the colonial gaze and cultural memory arrives. Histories that once seemed close now appear strange, distant and somehow forgotten in a newly imagined form of an adventure tale.

Photos courtesy of Nguyen Art Foundation.

“The year is XXXX” is now on view until November 2025 at Nguyen Art Foundation’s two venues EMASI Van Phuc and EMASI Nam Long. More information about the exhibition, opening hours and public programs can be found on the website.

After two successful nights in Saigon last year, a mesmerizing contemporary hip-hop dance performance is bringing its raw energy abroad.

In December last year, H2Q Dance Company performed “129BPM: Động Phách Tách Kén” at the Southern Military Theatre, making choreographer Bùi Ngọc Quân’s first (proper) independent production in Vietnam after over two decades with Les Ballets C de la B in Belgium, one of Europe’s most renowned dance companies.

The show blended dynamic live music by the duo Tiny Giant and drummer Đan Dương, evocative stage design by German artist Mara Madeleine Pieler, and captivating choreography performed by eight talented street dancers. 

The official poster of the performance.

This year, the creative collaboration is bringing “129BPM” abroad to Malaysia as part of the George Town Festival 2025, the first time that a performance art piece from Vietnam is included in the Malaysian art event. Viewers will be able to enjoy “129BPM” for two nights on August 4 and 5 at the historic Dewan Sri Pinang concert hall in George Town, Penang.

First created in 2010, George Town Festival is an annual art festival held in Penang, Malaysia to commemorate the UNESCO World Heritage Site status of the island town, awarded in 2008. Throughout the event, programs are often organized at different historic venues across George Town, from heritage buildings, amphitheaters to quaint alleys.

“‘129BPM: Động Phách Tách Kén’ is not your usual hip-hop breakdance battle, but a contemporary dance performance combining live music with Vietnamese folk elements. It is a journey that requires your full presence and attention to appreciate its fleeting and transformative moments,” writes An Trần in Saigoneer’s review of last year's show. Read the full piece here.

In 2024, “129BPM” was co-produced by H2Q Dance Company and the Hồ Chí Minh City Goethe-Institut. In 2025, the performances at George Town Festival 2025 are presented and run by MORUA Co. Ltd with transportation partner AirAsia.

Images courtesy of H2Q Dance Company.

Visit the official “129BPM” page on the George Town Festival website for more information and ticket booking.

To Đặng Thái Tuấn, the talent behind illustration project “Vietnam Retropunk,” whimsical depictions of robots and animatronics sprouting out from everyday objects and activities embody the space in between the ancient and the futuristic.

If Vietnam had advanced significantly in machinery and technology since the 1970s, what would it look like? Tuấn explores this question in “Vietnam Retropunk,” an ongoing series consisting of 16 total illustrations making up two books (so far). Woven throughout the series is a sense of nostalgia for Vietnam’s recent past, including important historical episodes like the subsidy era in Hanoi.

Everyday scenes with just a little sprinkle of cyberpunk.

Using a bright color palette and blending pop art, pen art, vintage, and futuristic style elements, Tuấn depicts quintessential Vietnamese everyday objects and activities such as bánh chưng, xe xích lô, street vendors, and mothers on a groceries run, with the addition of robots and animatronics: a cheeky little girl sits eagerly awaiting her robot to stuff, wrap, cook, assemble, and steam her bánh chưng; a mother with grey-streaked hair in floral pajamas is carried by a diligent cart-robot hybrid on the way to get groceries. “I love and wish to depict things that seem simple yet, upon closer observation, express unique stories and qualities of Vietnam,” Tuấn tells me in Vietnamese during our virtual chat.

The North-South Express reimagined as a robotic dragon.

The series is heavily imaginative. Tuấn calls upon childhood through commonplace motifs that are sure to resonate with many Vietnamese readers: toys, traditional food, street snacks, daily commute vehicles, and female figures — the mother, the aunt, the student in áo dài. “I hope that the motifs used evoke in audiences both feelings of familiarity and novelty,” Tuấn explains. “Most of what I depict, the everyday subject matter, feels familiar, but here and there, certain aspects feel altered or standout in a way that may surprise and make audiences think.”

Our childhood toys in mecha form.

In ‘Cảnh Phố’ or ‘Random Streets,’ for example, Tuấn points out how it might seem like your average train on first glances, but the precise inspiration is Hanoi's “tàu điện leng keng,” a network of old tramway criss-crossing in the capital from 1901 to 1991. This is one example of an element of a time Tuấn, having been born in 2000, barely experienced. “These images and way of life mainly exist through stories told to me by my parents and other adults in repetition, [details] that I relish on online archives such as Ảnh Hà Nội Xưa,” says Tuấn. This balance between familiarity and novelty, doused with imagination and recollection, encourages audiences to hold dear the smaller things that make up the Vietnamese way of life in past decades.

New ways to đi chợ!

“Vietnam Retropunk” is therefore a blend of classic (retro) and futuristic (punk) — the punkness here is from cyberpunk, a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting. Art that is cyberpunk often uses a combination of lowlife and high tech juxtaposed with societal collapse to highlight the detrimental impact of drug culture, technology, and the sexual revolution. Tuấn cited Akira from Katsuhiro Otomo, Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow, Cyberpunk 2077, The Blade Runner franchise, and Akira Toriyama as inspirations and personal heroes.

I also offered The Matrix trilogy, to which he agreed. We realized that there was a universality to the cyberpunk subgenre, especially its aesthetics — the doubtful yet eager reception of industrialization and technological revolution in the face of tradition and normalcy. Yet unlike most referenced cyberpunk inspirations, Tuấn’s work is anything but gloomy or nihilistic. With “Vietnam Retropunk” specifically, he wanted to connect with his roots — Hanoi specifically, and Vietnam at large — and embrace his love for where he came from in a way that was authentic to him.

Get your gas the futuristic way.

Given his current high demand, as seen in a thriving freelance portfolio encompassing well-known names such as TiredCity and Uniqlo, one would not have guessed that Tuấn recently graduated with a degree in IT. His journey to illustration has not been linear. “Having always had a knack for design, I had applied to design school at the end of my secondary years, failed short of that, made a pivot, only to find my way back through part time design jobs," Tuấn both bashfully and blissfully recalls.

He went through a period of assembling an amateurish CV and portfolio sparse with nothing but hobby-based drawings and secondary school projects, and getting rejected by all part-time positions except one, a graphic designer job at Memolas, a yearbook design and manufacturing company. It was here where the idea for ‘Bánh Chưng’ or ‘Banh Chung Making Machine,’ the first of “Vietnam Retropunk”’s illustrations, was conceived and realized on a shabby, off-brand tablet bought off of Shopee. As his designs gained traction, Tuấn rewarded himself with a second-hand iPad where the rest of “Vietnam Retropunk” came to be.

The first-ever illustration that started it all.

Having graduated from the simplistic short stories, Tuấn’s portfolio now boasts mesmerizingly detailed, larger-scale illustrations like ‘Hà Nội Rong’ or ‘Moving Hanoi’ that won him a design competition hosted by TiredCity. Looking forward, Tuấn plans to continue with “Vietnam Retropunk” and freelance commissions. He is slowly but steadily working on the first illustration for Book 3 of “Vietnam Retropunk,” as he believes there is still more ground to be covered with the series’ purpose, message, and central themes.

Tuấn's award-winning entry.

For now, through Vietnam Retropunk 1 and 2, Tuấn inspires his audience to not only remember but appreciate and hold dear the slower-paced, analogous way of life that is so enjoyably Vietnamese in this age of rapid technologization; to maintain focus on the small things of value; and to use advanced technology to serve the things that matter.

This article was originally published in 2024.

Being born at the cusp of the Year of the Rabbit (cat) and the Year of the Tiger offers the literal meaning for Hoàng Phúc's artist name, thố đầu • hổ vĩ, but he hopes it carries a metaphorical one, as well: “a humble beginning but a positive end,” he explained to Saigoneer. thố đầu • hổ vĩ’s origins may be humble — he started seriously focusing on illustrations just four years ago when he started university — but he has already reached remarkable achievements, as evidenced by three projects he shared with us.

‘Chapter 4: Chaos’ from the “Trăm hoa đua sắc” project.

“Vô công,” “Hội,” and “Trăm hoa đua sắc” each reveal Hoàng Phúc’s unique style that blends cultural materials, images, and indigenous symbols from Vietnam and East Asia to tell contemporary stories concerned with existential issues, including freedom, loneliness, and feelings of uselessness. Notably, he concerns himself with multi-piece projects as opposed to one-off illustrations, due to his belief that artwork operates best when several images come together to tell a concise, if not always obvious, story. Whether his own work or that of others, he explained: “Many single paintings with the same concept that complete a story together satisfy me more.”

‘Chapter 1: Leisured’ from the “Trăm hoa đua sắc” project.

“Trăm hoa đua sắc,” (100 Blooming Flowers), for example, is a 2023 project that captures his experience of visiting art exhibitions and museums. He observed that other patrons were not there to enjoy the art, but rather to take photos and videos of themselves for social media, with the artwork simply serving as a trendy backdrop.

‘Chapter 2: Wandering’ (left) and ‘Chapter 3: Witnessing’ (right) from “Trăm hoa đua sắc.”

He proceeded to his experiences with visual references from Vietnamese paintings, photography, architecture and traditional crafts. The small details, such as stone lion statues, lacquer textures, and rounded railing pillars, all connect the works with cherished traditions of visual identity. However, the characters, seen posing and playing but never admiring the work, offer criticism about the younger generation and its relationship to art. “Trăm hoa đua sắc,” was released in 2023, and Phúc said that, on further reflection, he believed “maybe it is a different form of experience for them. They are not really interested in exhibitions, but are spending time to care about themselves in an art space.”

A work from the “Hội” project.

Meanwhile, a newer project takes a more lighthearted tone, underscoring his thematic versatility. “Hội” concerns ítself with moments of childhood play and nostalgic merriments. Vibrant colors and bold lines complement the begone fashions and festival activities.

Two untitled pieces from “Hội.”

In addition to the children occupied with carefree games, “Hội” contains striking depictions of slightly surreal roosters. While not overtly addressing the project’s theme, within the context, the bird’s throat feathers call to mind exuberant confetti or firecrackers, while the looping legs tipped by graceful talons suggest the sleek seriousness of play. But this is just the way it makes me feel. Such room for interpretation is intentional. As thố đầu • hổ vĩ explained: “I often use metaphors and metonymies to develop a story. A second layer of meaning lies beneath the stories, the eye-catching images will always be a gift to me every time I watch and create works.”

Texture, color and details flirt with metaphors in this work from “Hội.”

“Hội” suggests a sense of lurking danger amidst the play.

Select teaser images from Hội have been appearing on his social media alongside some from “Vô Công” (No Work), another project set for release soon. The series of illustrations seeks to capture the feeling of helplessness and emptiness a person feels when unemployed, when the world’s economy is struggling or more broadly when a person simply feels useless in their lives, the artist explains.

Modern emotional states acquire traditional aesthetics in “Vô Công.”

Taken side-by-side, these sister images from “Vô Công” reveal Thọ đầu Hổ Vĩ's interest in textures and patterns.

This story, perhaps immediate and relatable to many people in 2025, borrows imagery from the past. Ceramic pots, imperial-era headware, a pagoda, and a quang gánh carrying an individual remind viewers that ennui is a timeless element of the human experience. One of thố đầu • hổ vĩ's favorite works to date, it serves as a good introduction to his work and his overarching interest in works that contain “a realistic theme expressed in a romantic form.”

Internal turmoil seems to create a setting of celestial lastitude.

thố đầu • hổ vĩ. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Only 26 years old, Phúc likely has a long career ahead that will be filled with surprising developments and beautiful fascinations. Pressed about his future plans, he told us: “Right now I'm interested in telling a long stories with concepts (courage, love, adulthood, etc.) and specific, touching stories the way [a] mangaka does; not exactly manga-like artwork, but maybe a more narrative and long-term project.” Regardless of what lies ahead, his work will be very worth keeping an eye on.

Altered colors and textures for the same images result in radically different moods.

Perhaps there is jubilation to be felt in the absence of work.

To view more artworks by Phúc, visit his Instagram account @thodauhovi.

[Top image: An untitled work from “Hội”]

Tarot decks can feel written in a foreign language.

The cards’ images, typically drawing from Renaissance Europe, Christian mysticism, and Greco-Roman allegories, can feel alien, even to those of us who speak the symbols fluently. U Linh Tarot was the first time I saw cards that could “speak Vietnamese.”

Illustrated by artist Trần Nguyễn Anh Minh, also known as Chú Mèo Kì Diệu, U Linh is a Tarot deck rooted in Vietnamese folk spirituality, inspired by motifs as varied as Đông Hồ woodcuts, Việt Điện U Linh Tập, imperial robes, and village legends. For Anh Minh, the deck is more than a passion project.

Trần Nguyễn Anh Minh, also known as Chú Mèo Kì Diệu.

“From 2009 to 2021, there wasn’t a single Tarot deck from Vietnam. We kept using foreign decks, and it felt disheartening. Vietnam doesn’t lack culture, so why don’t we have our own voice in the Tarot world?” Anh Minh explained when I interviewed him at his home last month. That question became the seed for U Linh Tarot. And from that seed bloomed a vivid cosmology: one that’s not only Vietnamese in content but Vietnamese in structure, rhythm, and soul. 

Before U Linh, there was Thiên Địa Nhân. Anh Minh’s first deck, his undergraduate thesis at Văn Lang University, was a travel-inspired journey through Vietnam’s landscapes and temples. While Thiên Địa Nhân celebrated beauty rooted in the physical world and specific places, Anh Minh was drawn to portraying beings of the spirit realm.

Thiên Địa Nhân, Anh Minh's first deck. Photo via Comicola

“U Linh actually came first, as an idea,” he confessed. “But it had a harder birth. Thiên Địa Nhân was like the strong older brother while U Linh is the little sibling that needed protection.” 

The delay was strategic. He needed time. And he needed help, especially from his university friend, an Lang Hoàng Thủ Thư, whom he credited as indispensable: “Without her, there wouldn’t be this deck. She’s the one who helped me connect with culture, spirituality, and our roots.” 

That collaboration allowed U Linh to become one of collective resonance. The U Linh Tarot is not a literal translation of the popular Rider-Waite deck from 1909. Instead, Anh Minh treats each card as a question: “What is this card’s soul? And where in Vietnamese culture does that soul live?”

In traditional Western decks, the Three of Pentacles card is often illustrated through the building of a cathedral, symbolizing cooperation and shared vision. In U Linh, this concept is reimagined through the Đông Hồ painting Hứng Dừa (Catching Coconuts), where three figures embody the essence of teamwork: one climbs the tree, another catches the coconuts, and a third stabilizes the base. Their coordinated effort becomes a living metaphor for harmony and mutual support in any collaboration.

The Three of Pentacles card (left) and the Nine of Cups (right). Photos via Anh Minh.

Known as the “wish card,” the Nine of Cups represents emotional satisfaction and fulfilled desires. U Linh interprets this archetype through the joyful figure of Ông Địa, the Southern guardian deity in Vietnamese folk tradition. With his cheerful demeanor and round belly, Ông Địa symbolizes abundance, ease, and benevolence. People often pray to him for the return of lost items or blessings, making him a natural embodiment of the card’s spirit: relaxed joy and the quiet confidence that good things will come.

Meanwhile, The Star card traditionally represents spiritual clarity, guidance, and a sense of renewed purpose. To design his version of it, Anh Minh faced the challenge of finding a Vietnamese symbol that captured this radiance, as five-pointed stars are not commonly used in traditional sacred imagery. The turning point came with the discovery of embroidered star motifs on the ceremonial robes of the Nguyễn dynasty. Drawing from this imperial heritage, U Linh’s Star card shines with cultural depth, affirming the deck’s ability to bridge past and present with luminous hope.

Anh Minh chose images with ritual care. The Tower is reimagined through a culturally resonant symbol: a coconut tree struck by lightning. Rather than depicting a European-style tower crumbling in chaos, the image evokes a distinctly Vietnamese belief that lightning is a form of divine punishment, striking down where evil resides. Here, the Tower becomes Thiên Ách, or "Heaven's Judgment." When it appears, the card speaks not just of sudden upheaval, but of spiritual reckoning. It may signal a necessary and forceful intervention – an act of justice, sweeping away hidden corruption or false foundations.

The Star card (left), Tower card (center) and Three of Swords (right). Photos via Anh Minh.

Even the Three of Swords, a card synonymous with heartbreak, was reinterpreted for the deck. Rather than focusing solely on emotional pain, this version emphasizes reason triumphing over emotion. A sword pierces a book, not a heart, signaling the clarity that comes from difficult but necessary decisions. It reflects the kind of heartbreak that stems from doing what is right, such as leaving a harmful relationship or letting go of an illusion. The card honors the quiet strength it takes to choose wisdom over attachment, even when it hurts.

Though spiritually inspired, U Linh required relentless design discipline. Anh Minh drew all 78 cards between Tết and April; just over three months. “My iPad didn’t have any games. When it ran out of battery, I slept. When it was full, I got up and drew. If I didn’t finish two cards a day, I wouldn’t let myself sleep.”

Matching this maniacal pace was a near-obsessive attention to symbolic structure. As a trained designer, he approached each Tarot card not as an illustration, but as semiotics. “Tarot isn’t just illustration; it’s language. Why is the hand raised instead of lowered? Why hold a cup and not a wand? Everything must have a reason.”

Anh Minh consulted Lang Hoàng Thủ Thư, sketched, rejected, revised, and repeated. Along the way, he introduced extra cards and alternate versions of traditional archetypes to reflect Vietnamese dualities. The Fool, which marks the beginning of the Tarot journey – a symbol of innocence, freedom, and stepping into the unknown – appears in two forms: Cậu Ấm and Cô Chiêu, representing parallel masculine and feminine paths.

The Cậu Ấm card (left) and the Cô Chiêu card (right). Photos via Anh Minh.

At the journey’s end is The World, the final chapter in the Fool’s arc, symbolizing fulfillment, integration, and wholeness. Anh Minh offers two interpretations: one depicts Cậu Ấm transformed into a grounded farmer: mature, self-reliant, and committed to the labor of everyday life after completing his quest. The other portrays Cô Chiêu as a radiant goddess having completed her inner journey of healing and self-realization and now embodying spiritual harmony and grace.

The Cô Chiêu World card (left) and the Cậu Ấm World card (right) Photos via Anh Minh.

“This deck strays a bit from the standard, but that’s the Vietnamese yin-yang philosophy. If there’s a man, there must be a woman. If there’s a path of reason, there must be one of spirit.”

Many assume U Linh concerns itself with nostalgic touchpoints, but that’s not accurate. It is interested in metaphysics. “This isn’t memory,” Anh Minh said. “These are spirits who haven’t yet reincarnated. We call it memory only because we can’t see them.”

To him, the deck is not a memory book but a channel. It reveals how Vietnamese ancestors encoded ethics and cosmology in stories, and how they interpreted suffering as imbalance and harmony as sacred. In his words: “Tarot is a philosophical book. It may have only 78 cards, but each card is a chapter on human nature.”

Though the first print run sold out quickly, Anh Minh is already preparing a reprint and a companion website, where he plans to elaborate on symbols too controversial or complex for the booklet included with the deck. He’s also mentoring new artists working on folk-inspired decks, collaborating on projects like Sông Núi Nước Nam, and joining group exhibitions that present Vietnamese spiritual art in contemporary formats.

“We must know who we are,” he told me at the end. “U Linh is an excuse to explore Vietnamese culture for those who don’t know it yet, who’ve never heard of it.”

As a reader, a Vietnamese, and a seeker, I know this deck is not merely about fortune. It is about becoming fluent in our own sacred language.

How many of us can identify all 63 localities in the current administrative map of Vietnam? Who has been to all of them? Who can name all the 54 ethnicities of Vietnamese across the country? These are all surprisingly hard things to do considering the average citizen doesn’t travel to other provinces often, and if they do, few actually stray from popular tourist destinations.

“Đây Ngồi Ráp Việt,” a new art project by local artist Callmebu, might be a small but whimsical starting point to get Vietnamese to learn more about the culture, history, and culinary wealth of all corners of the nation. Each of the 63 provinces and cities is portrayed in pixel art as a model kit featuring its geographical boundary and a few standout landmarks, cultural entities, and local delicacies for which it is best known.

Hồ Chí Minh City, for example, is depicted with bánh mì and cà phê bệt and the Notre-Dame Cathedral, while the Hanoi kit comes with phở, the Old Quarter, and Hoàn Kiếm Lake. The hometown of the author, whose real name is Hồng Hải Đăng, is Bến Tre in the Mekong Delta, so it’s a no-brainer that he has to highlight the coconut tree and its most iconic confectionery kẹo dừa as representatives. “When my friends hear that I’m from Bến Tre, their first reaction would be ‘Are you visiting home? Please bring back some coconut candies!’ That should show how much the coconut is linked with Bến Tre,” he told Saigoneer.

There is a certain vintage nostalgia to the pixelated figures that Đăng created to illustrate the regional treats and cultural activities, from Huế’s nhã nhạc performance to Hưng Yên’s Đông Tảo chicken. They evoke the charming games on older consoles like SNES, or modern pixel art titles like Terraria or Stardew Valley. “I picked pixel art because in my eyes, each province and city is like a ‘pixel’ in the bigger artwork of Vietnam,” Đăng shared. “The idea to turn them into model kits simply comes from my personal interest in Gundam figurines and jigsaw sets.”

Đăng’s passion for drawing manifested very early on during his childhood, and right when he was in secondary school, he already knew that he would pursue a career path related to art or creativity. Despite graduating university with a degree in architecture, he decided to work on illustrations and the arts. “Đây Ngồi Ráp Việt” was entirely completed during his free time in the evening after getting off from work, so it took about three months to take shape — from finalizing ideas, researching, drawing the demos to arriving at the finished versions. On average, each locality takes one day to be done.

The research is an aspect of “Đây Ngồi Ráp Việt” that makes the project both challenging and intellectually intriguing to Đăng. For one, within the set boundaries of the model kit design, only three cultural representatives are featured for each province, so how does one go about choosing from the diverse range of unique snacks and iconic landscapes? According to the author, the selection criteria can involve a number of pillars like food, nature, architecture, history, and spirituality, but at times it’s simpler: just what impresses him the most about the places.

Which leads to the many examples that made this process of constant learning exciting, such as finally putting the name on the face of a dish that he’s enjoyed numerous times before or discovering that two seemingly isolated snacks from two separate provinces are actually more similar than previously thought, like Cao Bằng’s bánh khảo and Huế’s bánh in. Which province to attribute phở to was also a difficult decision, as there are theories and sources pointing the soup’s origin to both Hanoi and Nam Định.

Ultimately, delving deeper into the regional cultures of Vietnam was the one guiding purpose of “Đây Ngồi Ráp Việt,” for both its creator and netizens who enjoy tiny cultural discoveries. “When I eventually completed the artworks, I felt quite emotional, as if I’d finally assembled Vietnam in my own way,” he admitted. “It started at first as a personal project, but once I shared it online and saw how people recognize their hometown in each pixel, it made me happy.”

Drawing on themes of childhood memories, human beliefs and spirituality, filmmaker and painter Huỳnh Công Nhớ moves between the worlds of cinema and painting, inviting viewers on a journey in search for the quiet beauty in life’s simplest moments.

“Mắt Nhớ” (The Gaze That Remembers) marks the first-ever solo exhibition in Vietnam by Đà Nẵng-based filmmaker and painter Huỳnh Công Nhớ. A special collaboration between Gallery Medium (Hồ Chí Minh City) and Galerie BAO (Paris), the exhibition features paintings created from 2022, in which the artist explores the intersection between his cinematic sensibility and the stillness of painting. Through bright colors and gentle brushstrokes, his paintings evoke a quiet sense of motion and feeling, like paused frames from a slow film, playfully and calmly translating the language of cinema onto canvas.

Installation view of “Mắt Nhớ” (The Gaze That Remembers) at Gallery Medium.

Huỳnh Công Nhớ entered the art world through cinema and was trained under the mentorship of acclaimed filmmaker Trần Anh Hùng in the Autumn Meeting program — a renowned workshop for promising young international filmmakers. In 2022, he expanded his visual storytelling by making a transition into painting. Well known for a rustic approach in filmmaking that carries emotional depth, his works focus on human experiences within Vietnam’s socio-political context, opening up endless possibilities for storytelling while reminding us of the importance of human connection and the power of stories told through various materials.

When asked about the shift into painting, Huỳnh Công Nhớ shared with Gallery Medium that it began with simple sketches made during the filmmaking process, and he began using acrylic paint to sketch out ideas for bigger film projects, as a way to channel his restless energy. Over time, painting became not only a form of artistic expression but also a return to the innocence of childhood.

Installation view of “Mắt Nhớ” (The Gaze That Remembers) at Gallery Medium.

When one gazes at Huỳnh Công Nhớ’s works, the first impression is often the profound interconnection between humans, their beliefs, and spirituality. Faceless characters appear in various states of motion against vast landscapes, each crowned with a halo, symbolizing faith, hope, and potential. Although the artist himself is not Catholic, being raised by nuns in the Catholic church has deeply influenced both his life and his art. This spiritual undercurrent, combined with his filmmaking background, is evident in the way he “frames” his landscapes and subjects, echoing the language of cinema within his paintings.

Nguyện Cầu #07 (2023), acrylic on canvas, 60 x 90 cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

Through still life paintings, the artist’s approach captures the beauty and simplicity of everyday objects with playful, colorful brushstrokes that also evoke peace. His dreamlike works depict real-life scenes — bonsai trees, toy animals, fruits cracked open, and food on the table — which blur the line between reality and imagination. These scenes emerge from his daily observations and childhood memories, shaped by a quiet belief in an invisible force residing within the ordinary. In doing so, his works invite viewers to pause and consider the quiet magic of everyday life.

Tĩnh Vật (2022), acrylic on canvas, 60 x 80 cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

Installation view of “Mắt Nhớ” (The Gaze That Remembers) at Gallery Medium.

Like a slow film made up of many different frames, his paintings recreate slices of moments unfolding on a moving screen by transforming the medium of moving images onto the canvas. Though still paintings, they convey a dynamic sense of emotions, drawing viewers into the emotions embedded in each piece. Childhood memories, whether joyful or sorrowful, profoundly shape the way a person perceives life, makes decisions and chooses what to hold onto their mind. Interestingly, neither the artist nor his work is bound by any specific religious belief, and his works express a broader theme that many human beings constantly search for: something to believe in and a sense of healing. This is where childhood memories intertwine with beliefs, shaped through an innocent and naive gaze.

Giao Thông #01 (2022), acrylic on canvas, 50 x 75 cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

Installation view of “Mắt Nhớ” (The Gaze That Remembers) at Gallery Medium.

Huỳnh Công Nhớ’s artistic journey, exploring various mediums, has profoundly shaped the themes in his work. His art resonates with the audience, whether religious or not, offering a universal human experience. “Mắt Nhớ” takes viewers from cinematic frames to intimate painting, expanding storytelling possibilities and inviting reflection on the search for peace, happiness, and genuine faith. The beauty and joy of everyday life exist alongside the chaos of the outside world, revealing the many layers of our experience. For the artist, painting became a vital way to capture his ideas and emotions amid the challenges of filmmaking, as a meaningful method of choosing what and how to remember.

Installation view of “Mắt Nhớ” (The Gaze That Remembers) at Gallery Medium.

“Mắt Nhớ” (The Gaze That Remembers) is now on view at Gallery Medium until June 15, 2025. More information on the exhibition can be found on this Facebook page.

Hanoi Rock City (HRC) is more than a household name for the youth of Hanoi, especially anyone who’s fond of the “Rock n Roll” culture. Nearly 15 years after its founding, HRC has become a special cultural realm, one that brings musicians and fans closer to one another on its storied stage.

The universe of sounds in “the city of rock”

A live performance at HRC.

The earliest inkling of Hanoi Rock City started when its co-founder Võ Đức Anh and his friends were studying in the United Kingdom. They jammed together often, organized charity concerts for the Vietnamese Student Association in the UK, and were regulars at indie nights where amateur musicians could let their music fly.

“Each city in the UK has hundreds of such venues, creating a welcoming scene for artists that are just starting out. Many of them later found fame thanks to these cozy spaces. When we returned to Vietnam, our group was determined to open a similar venue together like what we experienced in the UK. We were very inspired by Nottingham Rock City, so we chose the name Hanoi Rock City,” Đức Anh reminisces.

Võ Đức Anh, one of HRC’s four founders.

The word “rock” in the name might evoke the corresponding music genre, but it’s not complete. What the founders wanted to foster is the Rock n Roll spirit, building a home for diversity, everyone, and every genre.

During HRC’s launch years ago, they encountered some roadblocks as rock and indie culture in Vietnam was still in its infant stages. At that time, there weren’t many local independent artists with distinct sounds and strong foundations, so it was a challenge for HRC to find performers.

“The first five years we mostly lived on shows by our foreign friends living in Hanoi, or international bands that were touring in the region, but our goal was still to give Vietnamese audiences a more varied, more seasoned, more dynamic market,” he says.

Left: Hà Lê. Right: Mèow Lạc.

Until now, HRC has more or less accomplished that earliest promise when there are gradually more Vietnamese groups in the scene who can confidently showcase their musical personality. From the cradle that is HRC, a number of “first-generation” artists were born, including Nu Voltage, Gỗ Lim and Mimetals, who have managed to carve for themselves a space to perform and bond with kindred listeners. An honorable mention is Mèow Lạc — an indie group that had their start at HRC and has since thrived and found success on the national stage of reality TV competition Rock Việt.

“Our advantage lies in the unwavering assistance and support from everyone towards HRC. We receive help from many people, from artists and embassies to cultural funds, but most importantly, from the audience. Everyone lends a hand to build Hanoi Rock City,” Đức Anh shares.

“No Phone Show” by The Cassette.

The mecca of rock culture and a community creative hub

Elaborating on the future of Hanoi Rock City, Đức Anh promises that the venue is trying its best to promote the culture of rock to a wider audience and to attract international music acts to Hanoi to perform and create music together. Most recently, HRC spearheaded a new concept called No Phone Shows, described as simply concerts that have: “No recording! No photography! No taking down evidence! The show only exists through verbal descriptions.”

The premise means audience members and artists are requested to leave their phones firmly in their pockets for the entirety of the set. This format was fashioned with the aim to help listeners most wholeheartedly immerse in the atmosphere of a music night during an era when electronic devices have invaded every civil space.

Still, the introduction of No Phone Shows has spawned many humorous incidents like some concert-goers mistaking that their phones would be confiscated like in schools. Đức Anh could only laugh and respond: “Everything runs on the spirit of self-discipline. Everyone sticks to the rules and enjoys a complete show. Musicians are more passionate too because they feel safe to let their hair down to feel the bond with the audience, via the singing along, or the swaying arms in the air, instead of looking down just to see a ‘forest’ of phones directed towards them.”

“The Red Room”: A room not only for playing music, and listening to music, but also a community space for hanging out with friends or sipping on a beer or two.

It’s not a stretch to claim that Hanoi Rock City has contributed an indispensable part in the growth of rock culture in Hanoi and Vietnam. Formed based on the foundation of nurturing, and encouraging artists to “just start writing,” “just start composing,” HRC can provide a small stage for budding artists to express themselves to a small-but-enough crowd of listeners. It’s that “just enough”-ness that propelled young Vietnamese to be more confident in themselves and feel the freedom to bare their musical talents.

Over their years in operation, HRC has championed many new performing acts to enrich the concert experience in Hanoi and Vietnam. Some recent musicians that have left their memorable marks on this stage include Ngọt, Cá Hồi Hoang, Chillies, Vũ., Hà Lê, The Flob, The Cassette while from the previous generation, one could count Gỗ Lim, Quái Vật Tí Hon among friends of HRC. Until now, HRC has always made efforts to further that “independent spirit” by being on the lookout for new artists.

Hanoi Rock City — where gutsy musicians face off with gutsy listeners.

To N., a Hanoian who’s a regular at HRC, the one thing that glues them to this community is the distinctive “wildness” of Rock n Roll.

“I love music so I want to experience as many different genres of music as possible. Other venues would invite famous bands and they would sing songs that I might have heard many times on the street, but at HRC, it would be brand-new artists, singing new songs. The feeling when you’re among the first people to know of something makes me happy, that’s why I always want to be part of HRC,” N. shares.

Đức Anh expresses his happiness on the occasion of HRC's 12^th birthday in 2023: “HRC’s birthday is always an emotional musical feast. [...] It’s the best thing ever because, looking back at each year, we realize we made many friends, even though they’re still young and full of future aspirations; HRC will always be here to encourage them to write and compose because we’re here to create opportunities for you to keep your fire going. Most importantly, it’s the audience that counts; they are always ready to welcome newness with an open mind, ushering in a talented new generation of Vietnamese music.”

This article was originally published in 2023.

We delve into the lives of Saigon’s artisans — an animal coconut leaf folder, a woodcarver embracing modern influences, an accomplished street corner calligrapher, and an itinerant craftsman to see what they’re doing to keep their art alive.

On a normal drive down Saigon's vibrant streets, one might find themselves stopping at a traffic light where a veteran of the arts works alluringly, with the craft laid out neatly on the pavement nearby. Just a few years ago, this would have been a common Saigon experience, however, for many Saigoneers, our loss is a slow and unnoticed disappearance. 

With an increasing number of small food stalls and restaurants, as well as global brands popping up all around Saigon, the city's streets seem busier and more dynamic than ever.

Nonetheless, with globalization changing the once-quaint landscape of Saigon's past, its personality as 'the Pearl of the Far East' has also been altered majorly, reducing the presence of xích lô drivers, children’s DIY kites floating in the skies, and the once-popular and easily recognizable Vietnamese entertainment of cải lương musical drama and hát bội classical opera. For today's young Saigoneers, these previously defining traits are gradually becoming just marks in the country’s rich heritage.

Despite this, and with true Saigon resilience, a crop of artisans are still trying to keep the city’s heritage alive. Amongst them are the true street artists who live and breath the passion of Saigon’s heroic past.

Saigon's Coconut Leaf-Folding "Peter Pan"

As a true "Peter Pan" of Saigon, Le Minh — a retired artist-turned street artist — spends his days surrounded by the magic of his folded animals made of coconut leaves, an art form that has roots in his childhood.

“I never sell in one place because I want to spread the joy and the nostalgic memories of my childhood to as many people as possible,” he tells me in Vietnamese. Minh used to be a painter, however, as old age blurred his vision, he resolved to spend his time remastering the art of coconut leaf folding that he once knew and loved. 

As a child, he spent time with his teacher, helping him fold leaf animals. However, as he grew up, he started working as a painter and trying out other better-paid art forms in order to support his family.

Since his retirement eight years ago, Minh has mastered folding 31 different types of animals. Of these, he claims that he can fold the most common ones, like grasshoppers and fish, in only five minutes, whereas more complex animals like dragons, peacocks, or phoenixes can take him up to one hour. Despite the varied complexities of his product range, Minh sells each for VND20,000. However, he shared that he sometimes sells them for even less, as his main aim is to raise awareness of this beautiful traditional art form.

Despite the joy he gets from his art, Minh would not be able to spread his passion for coconut leaf folding without the support of his family. Even with the fame he’s found through coverage from the Vietnamese media over the past few years, he says that he would have struggled to support himself without them. Thanks to passionate coconut leaf folders like Minh, many young Vietnamese like myself still know about this traditional art and culture.

The Woodcarver Embracing Modern Influences

While some artists have been holding onto the traditions of the past, others have adopted modern influences to bring their art forms into contemporary Saigon life.

A decade ago, one could find an array of wood-carving shops on Pasteur Street, north of its junction with Le Loi Boulevard. However, after years of bad business and increasing rent prices, many of the woodcarvers left and the buildings were torn down to make way for the 18-story Liberty Central Hotel. Now, all that remains of this past is hidden in a dark alley leading to a building behind Pham Minh tailors.

Quang, with 40 years of experience in his profession, is a talented woodcarver. Originally majoring in carpentry at the Ho Chi Minh University of Arts, he uses his experience to lead a team of six carpenters and combine a whole array of wood varieties — including rosewood, ebony and parasol wood — in his art. Not only does he create the signboards which can be seen while driving past his business, but he also creates wooden art pieces, like a giant carved image of “The Last Supper,” menu holders for restaurants, cardholders for businesses and many other wooden items. 

Situated in one of the most touristy areas of the city, the business’ main customers are normally foreigners or tourists who are attracted by the curious, yet alluring, wood art. This makes the retail side of the business more seasonal, increasing over Tet and Christmas when there are more tourists in Saigon.

Meanwhile, the wholesale side of the business is mostly constant year-round. This, according to Quang, is a product of the curiosity of foreigners for the skilled woodwork and the array of wood variety that his products display.

Despite his continued efforts, it is only Quang’s experience and connections that help him secure his small spot on Pasteur. With none of his six-man team of hired part-time woodcarvers interested in continuing his legacy, it looks like Quang will be one of the last to carry on this specific tradition of woodcarving, which used to dominate this section of the busy road.

The Professional Calligraphers

From fantastic coconut leaf folded beasts to Mickey Mouse-themed wooden toilet boards, nothing screams Vietnam more than thư pháp artwork.

With thư pháp’s modern reputation of appearing mainly as entertainment during Tet or at special traditional Vietnamese festivals, one of the last places you’d imagine to find these fluid brush lines is on the humble Truong Dinh-Dien Bien Phu intersection, on the wall of the Department of Science and Technology of Ho Chi Minh City.

At around 8am each day, a husband and wife can be seen putting up calligraphy art on a small opening on the foliage-covered crumbling wall of the department. Nhat Minh, the sole calligrapher of the two, with 12 years of experience in the profession, lends his name to the branding of their small enterprise. 

Originally from Dong Thap Province, he told me that he left his hometown to learn his craft, an endeavor which took him a year to master fully. Since then, he has created pre-made and made-to-order calligraphy art for the people of Saigon. Most of his customers, he says, are regulars who have known him for a long time. They come to him with orders for themselves or as gifts for their friends and family. For his efforts, he charges around VND200,000 for smaller artworks, and VND500,000 for larger pieces, although his prices differ depending on the request. 

With calligraphy now something that only big businesses generally do on a large scale, a life spent selling homemade calligraphy on the streets is not an easy task. For Minh and his wife, calligraphy is their only life-line, though thanks to the continued appreciation of Saigoneers for this art, he can continue to keep this tradition alive as a street artist in Saigon’s modern landscape.

The Hát Bội Classical Opera Masks Creator

Finally, a once-popular form of entertainment which is now disappearing and becoming a niche interest, hát bội classical opera has for many years been a rapidly fading tradition. 

A true guardian of his art, for nearly 30 years, itinerant craftsman Nguyen Van Bay has been cycling around Saigon with a display of hát bội classical opera masks on his ramshackle bicycle. He sells his art to people on the street, as well as museums, tourists or cafes and villas for decoration. 

With hát bội classical opera having an abundant number of characters, “chú Bảy” — as people know him — claims he knows the details of over 1,000 opera characters. For anyone interested in these characters, he sells his products in sets of 13, 21 or 33 masks. However, he shared that he once sold a whole bike full of masks to a very enthusiastic foreigner for around VND20 million, which he estimated to be way over 33 different character masks.

Although in the original hát bội classical operas the actors painted their faces instead of using masks, chú Bảy uses the image of the fully painted actors’ faces to create masks to capture the essence of the art.

Hearing chú Bảy talk about his work, and seeing the detail he puts into every mask, shows how much of a perfectionist he is. His smallest masks take around six hours to create. This process includes creating a separate clay mold for each mask depending on different characters' faces, then creating a plaster mold combined with silicon and stone powder as a base, and finally painting over the base with oil paint to reveal the distinct traits of each character. A similar process is used to create the larger masks, which take several days to finish.

Looking at most of his masks, all of them have one thing in common — the vibrant colors of red, white and black. Talking to chú Bảy, he explains that these are the main shades of hát bội classical opera, each signifying a different meaning. Nonetheless, he also chooses to portray a majority of characters with these colors because they stand out compared to characters with less eye-catching designs, thus attracting more customers.

Chú Bảy identifies as a big fan of hát bội and has childhood memories of the traveling classical opera group which would stop by his village. According to him, the 1960s were the golden age of the genre, but now it is a dying art form. 

As the creator of hát bội masks as a means to preserve the art he loves, and being the sole street artist dedicated to hát bội in the whole of Vietnam, chú Bảy is trying to spread his passion to Saigon’s younger generation. He said that, in the past, he has tried to pass on his trade to other people, however, he is yet to find anyone who has even a small amount of the commitment and passion that he has for his art. Despite this, he says he will try to continue to work and spread his passion for hát bội until the day he dies.

Like many who still see a mirage of Saigon's past, when writing this article, I believed I could simply drive around the city to find a variety of street artists. I couldn't have been more wrong, as I spent hours scouring the streets before I found even one artist, by accident, on my way home. Although these are hardly the only street artists in Saigon’s modern landscape, the sad fact is that every type of art is struggling to survive. 

Though these four street artists come from different areas of the arts, when interviewed, they all had one common thing to say, which was that they had barely been able to sell anything in the past few months due to the pandemic and that they are still struggling now in its aftermath.  

By meeting these four incredible people and learning about their stories, it is hard not to see the pure passion which drives them to maintain this almost-sacred Saigon heritage, and the sacrifices that they make to preserve their art forms. The only question now is whether or not Saigon will still be home to a new generation of street artists maintaining tradition, or embracing modern life in the future. Only time will tell…

This article was originally published in 2020.

Having just finished recording their new album, Mèow Lạc is temporarily taking time apart to focus on individual development so that, when they regroup, fresh ideas can come through.

Mèow Lạc consists of four members: keyboardist Hoàng Phương, Tô Ra on drums, Nguyên Lê the frontman, and Nguyên Vũ on bass. They revealed to Saigoneer that Mèow Lạc is currently a passion project, and to support this passion project, all of the members are working various side-jobs. While Tô Ra teaches drums and Nguyên Vũ teaches bass, Nguyên Lê works his magic behind the scenes at Hanoi Rock City as a sound technician.

“Mèow Lạc” translates to “Lost Cat.” When asked how that came to be, Nguyên Lê and the band's manager, Hoàng, who have stuck with the band the longest, both laughed as they reminisced about how it took two months for them to finalize something. They share: “Mèow just means cat, everyone here likes cats. But Lạc can be broken into three meanings.” The first definition is being lost: “I feel like our music often gets lost from one universe to another in the same song, or even the same verse,” Nguyên Lê explains.

The second meaning came from the Sino-Vietnamese word “lạc quan,” which means happy. This perfectly encapsulates the band's musical personality: playful and optimistic.

Lastly, “lạc” also means peanut. Though it isn't necessarily deep, this one feels like their personal favorite. “‘Peanut’ works very well when we want to design a poster or a logo. We can just draw a cat hugging a peanut and that will make Mèow Lạc. It’s a terrible pun, but it works!” they assure.

Mèow Lạc’s music is youthful, fun, and disruptive. Never committing to a solidly defined genre, they envision an endless creative boundary. “The coolest thing about our music is that it is a mixture of so many genres and influences. While I am heavily influenced by Twenty One Pilots, Nguyên Vũ gears towards funk and fusion; Tô Ra plays all kinds of genres because she has a very strong foundation in music. Lastly, Hoàng Phương fan-boys Jisoo from Blackpink!” Nguyên Lê cheekily shares. In their latest single, 'Hikikomori,' bits of jazz, alternative, and funk were effortlessly combined to portray a buoyant life in quarantine. The lyrics read: “Life is great when you get to be yourself, not having to worry about anybody judging. Life is great when you get to be alone, away from all the drama and flattery.”

Left to right: Tô Ra, Nguyên Vũ, Nguyên Lê, Hoàng Phương

Switching scenes, Mèow Lạc experiments with heavy electronica in ‘Nhất quỷ, nhì ma, thứ ba lũ quạ,’ a whimsical satire on school life. On the other hand, the romantic, keyboard-heavy track ‘Mưa bóng mây’ tells the story of a guy being head over heels about a girl. “Our main musical elements are creativity and explosivity. All of our individual influences can be seen in Mèow Lạc's music. Sometimes it may feel like chaos because every instrument seems to be on a different track. But they somehow come together to form the colors of Mèow Lạc. Only these four kids with these four brains can create something like that,” Nguyên Vũ adds.

In storytelling, there are three standard points of view: first-, second-, and third-person. When Nguyên Lê writes music for Mèow Lạc, he always imagines himself in the perspective of a cat. If one looks at the lyrics to each of their songs, every story that Mèow Lạc tells, every adventure that their character embarks on, fits perfectly with the experience of a lost cat. The cat sees “lũ quạ” (the crows), “mưa bóng mây” (the summer rain), and two people dancing under the living room lights. It is both personal and objective at the same time. “I borrow the eyes of a cat to tell objective stories,” says Nguyên Lê.

Every band has a “headquarters” — a place where they practice, bond, and find their creative energy. For Mèow Lạc, that is Hanoi Rock City (HRC). Võ Đức Anh, aka chú Đa, the founder of this art & performing space, in particular, has been an important mentor for the band since day one. “If we were asked how the band became what it is today, we would proudly say we grew up at HRC. We have performed on that stage more than anywhere else. We practiced there, ate there, slept there and our album was also recorded in that room. We will forever be in debt to HRC and chú Đa because, without them, there wouldn't be Mèow Lạc,” they share.

“When I first started singing at HRC in 2018, chú Đa gave me a piece of advice that has stuck with me ever since. He told me that my singing seems superficial and that I lacked conviction in my lyrics. He said that when I sing, I have to really sing as I mean it, and really sing instead of just performing. There is no such thing as ‘fake it til you make it’ here. The audience can really tell when a performer is not putting their soul into the performance or expressing all of their feelings,” Nguyên Lê adds, “after receiving that advice, I realized that if this was my dream, I need to put 100% of myself into this; and to really sing every note with conviction.”

Beyond the stage, but the four friends always have each other's back in real life, too. To them, finding one another and forming a band was easy, but being able to stick with each other and develop chemistry is the real luck of fate. They began as simply as any other band, making calls, inviting each other to jam sessions, getting iced tea after practices, and giving each other relationship advice. “We all have a common trait: our short temper. So when one of us gets mad, the other three will have to comfort that person. Thus, we take turns being mad,” they laugh.

On why they make music, the band opens up: “We write music to say things that are difficult to say. You know the feeling when you have a lot to express but you somehow cannot put it into concise sentences? We chose to express it through music instead. Our music speaks what our words can't. Being able to tell these stories on stage is an indescribable experience; we can't explain how that kind of adrenaline can be so addictive.”

When I asked what makes Mèow Lạc stand out at a time when there are so many up-and-coming bands, their answer came as a surprise: “We are just nerds who sit at home making music, then performing what we have created for an audience. We are just simply taking it easy that way, and that is also how we view music. I find it cool because the things we create can’t be found in other bands, but we never think of ourselves in the midst of other people, but rather view ourselves as an individual band that does things they love. Just as simple as that. To really analyze what makes us stand out from other bands is so difficult. The musical world is too wide. Hence, we never liked this question because every time we answer it in the most textbook manner, it leaves us feeling unsettled. A thousand bands can claim that they are unique, but in actuality, they don’t know what it’s like to look at their work objectively. So we are here simply trying to make good music in our own way.”

Next up for Mèow Lạc is the release of their first album, the name of which will soon be revealed. The theme for it is urban spaces and cities viewed through the eyes of a cat, relatable yet quite refreshing. A stray cat will see people strolling on the streets of a summer day, people pondering under the light of their apartment; it will witness a robbery, etc. The musical elements will also be a mixture of what they consider urban cultural influences: pop, jazz, hip hop, rock, and electro.

In the end, Mèow Lạc summarizes their motto as “creating youthful music; music that young people can enjoy, music for young people to dance to, music that puts a smile on your face.” They cannot wait to get back on the stage, to feel the exhilarating energy as the audience chants their name. But most importantly, “simply to have fun with what we do.”

This article was originally published in 2022.

Vietnamese musicians created a musical bridge across political divides, transforming the pain of a fractured nation into melodies that still resonate with both homeland and diasporic Vietnamese 50 years after the war's end.

Two years ago, I was on an airplane bound for Canada to pursue my doctoral studies and, potentially, begin a new life. Though I had traveled abroad before, this journey was different. In the past 50 years, millions of Vietnamese have left their homeland seeking new beginnings in North America through various means. Many of these journeys were far from easy. Thousands perished along the way. As the course of history unfolded and living conditions improved, my own departure came with relative comfort: a 30-hour journey rather than the days or months many before me endured.

Looking out the window as we departed, tears welled in my eyes. Everything I loved, lived for, and would probably die for grew smaller until it became merely a speck of light on the horizon. Hanoi, where I was born, raised, and had spent most of my life with my family, seemed insignificant against the vast expanse of earth below. I couldn't help but wonder: how did they feel when they left home decades ago, whether from Saigon, Hải Phòng, or elsewhere? It couldn't have been pleasant.

Before arriving in Canada, my knowledge of the Vietnamese diaspora was limited to fragmented exchanges in online comment sections, either beneath contentious political Facebook posts or nostalgic nhạc vàng YouTube videos. In Toronto, I've befriended several Vietnamese Canadians of my generation or slightly older; people I've come to love and admire. We share remarkable commonalities. We grew up not with the sounds of Kalashnikovs and B-52s, but with internet memes. We all laugh when passing the Thuý Nga music store on Dundas Street because it evokes memories of wedding music or our parents' karaoke sessions. And of course, we share memories of cold weather, echoed in our parents' voices as they built careers beneath the snows of Toronto or Prague. The conversation only grows complicated when we discuss our grandparents, whose willingness to die for their respective causes stood in fundamental opposition.

‘Hai Người Lính’ (The Two Soldiers). Photo by Chu Chí Thành.

But after 50 years, does it really matter anymore? Today, their grandchildren watch the same Netflix shows, receive similar education, and navigate the liminal spaces between empires. We've all come to recognize globalization as quite bittersweet: older generations dying either for or against global capitalism, while younger generations question their identity within its remnants. What shared narratives can we, young Vietnamese, tell each other to foster understanding, healing, and to rebuild a world after older generations spent their lives at each other's throats?

In previous articles for Saigoneer, I've mentioned growing up with both nhạc đỏ and nhạc vàng, though I never truly appreciated them until I was far from home. These songs have become companions during my late-night study sessions these days. The more I listen and learn about their composers, the more I've come to question the rigid distinction between nhạc đỏ and nhạc vàng. I'm increasingly skeptical of the common belief that during wartime, North and South Vietnam represented two entirely separate cultural entities. The history of Vietnamese tân nhạc is remarkably unique: we sing about everything, from grand national ideals to the most intimate corners of the human soul. We sing despite political hardships. These songs are so nuanced. They capture human experiences that political narratives often flatten or erase.

In this piece, I wish to explore some of these nuances in Vietnamese music through the works of Phạm Duy, Phạm Đình Chương, Trịnh Công Sơn, and Trần Quang Lộc — musicians whose art transcended rigid political boundaries. Many of these compositions began as poems written by communist writers like Hữu Loan or Quang Dũng before being adapted into songs by artists from the Republic of Vietnam, creating an inadvertent artistic dialogue across the divide.

‘Bà Mẹ Gio Linh’ | Phạm Duy

‘Bà Mẹ Gio Linh’ (The Mother of Gio Linh) stands as one of Phạm Duy’s greatest compositions. It captures the grief and resilience of Vietnamese mothers during the First Indochina War. Composed in 1949, the song was inspired by a harrowing real-life event in Gio Linh, Quảng Trị province, where two local men, commune head Nguyễn Đức Kỳ and teacher Nguyễn Phi, were executed by French Union forces. Their severed heads were displayed publicly to intimidate villagers supporting the Việt Minh resistance. Phạm Duy (1921–2013), then a member of the Việt Minh’s cultural cadre, was deeply moved by the stoic dignity of one bereaved mother, whose silent sorrow became the emotional core of the song.

Choked with emotion, she says not a word
Packs her bundle to retrieve the head

According to American musicologist Jason Gibbs, the song notably avoids hatred and vengeance, even though it has a clear enemy. Instead, it focuses on the mother's humane and brave act of retrieving her son’s remains without uttering a word of resentment. Phạm Duy’s lyrical restraint gave the song its emotional resonance. As one admirer and former Việt Minh member put it, “anyone who listens must cry.” But these tears weren’t ones of surrender; rather, they were tears of empathy, solidarity, and motivation. Despite its popularity, the Việt Minh criticized the original lyrics as “negative” because they lacked overt revolutionary zeal. To ensure the song aligned with the movement’s ideological goals, changes were made to insert themes of struggle and class solidarity.

Thái Thanh's recording of ‘Bà Mẹ Gio Linh.’ Video via Diễm Xưa Productions YouTube page. 

Phạm Duy’s trajectory mirrors the complex relationship between art and politics in wartime Vietnam. A former Việt Minh cultural cadre, in 1951, he left the resistance in disillusionment over its censorship of creative expression. He moved to Saigon and became a central figure in South Vietnam’s musical renaissance.

Phạm Duy reflects in his memoirs that when he later abandoned Việt Minh and returned to Hanoi, he had to write a new version titled ‘Bà Mẹ Nuôi’ to avoid political persecution. The original lyrics, if sung in French-controlled territories at that time, could have led to his imprisonment. Yet, he remained deeply proud of the melody, inspired by Central Vietnamese folk music, and considered ‘Bà Mẹ Gio Linh’ one of the most glorious achievements of his life.

Phạm Duy (left) and his wife, Thái Hằng (right).

In the later years of his life, after decades in exile, Phạm Duy made the momentous decision to return to Vietnam. This homecoming in 2005 was not merely personal. It signaled a quiet healing, bridging North and South, revolution and exile, past and present. Having once been blacklisted by the Vietnamese government due to his defection and the politically sensitive nature of his work, his return was made possible through gradual cultural thawing and increasing appreciation for his artistic legacy. Upon his return, Phạm Duy resumed public life and continued to engage with younger generations, reinforcing his enduring influence on Vietnamese music and cultural identity. ‘Bà Mẹ Gio Linh’ was one of Phạm Duy’s earliest works to be officially licensed for circulation in communist Vietnam on July 21, 2005.

‘Đôi Mắt Người Sơn Tây’ | Phạm Đình Chương, Quang Dũng

‘Đôi Mắt Người Sơn Tây’ (Eyes of the Sơn Tây Woman) stands as one of the most profoundly moving romantic compositions in Vietnamese tân nhạc. It was crystallized from two renowned poems by the communist writer Quang Dũng (1921–1988): ‘Đôi Bờ’ (Two Shores) and ‘Mắt Người Sơn Tây’ (Eyes of the Sơn Tây Woman). Set to music by the great composer Phạm Đình Chương (1929–1991) in South Vietnam in 1970, the song isn't merely a nostalgic love ballad. Transcending both poetry and music, it depicts the longing for homeland and the yearning for peace.

Hà Thanh's recording of ‘Đôi Mắt Người Sơn Tây.’ Video via YouTube. 

The poems ‘Đôi Bờ’ and ‘Mắt Người Sơn Tây’ were written by Quang Dũng around 1948–1949, during the First Indochina War. Both pieces were dedicated to a young woman named Nhật, nicknamed Akimi, whom he had encountered in Sơn Tây. This fleeting yet incredible romance left an indelible mark on the poet's soul. It became the wellspring for his emotionally charged verses. The song's first four lines are extracted from ‘Đôi Bờ’ while the remainder comes from ‘Mắt Người Sơn Tây,’ creating a musical piece that is both cohesive and emotionally multidimensional:

Longing, oh longing, for whom do I yearn?
The distant river veiled by layers of endless rain
Your eyes, oh your eyes from days past, did they hold the sorrow of loneliness?
When autumn first arrived, when autumn first arrived one early morning

During the Nhân Văn–Giai Phẩm crackdown, however, these poems faced criticism for being petty bourgeois, overly sentimental, and inconsistent with revolutionary ideals. Quang Dũng, along with many other artists and writers, endured censorship and creative restrictions. Nevertheless, his work endured in the hearts of the public, particularly in South Vietnam, where ‘Đôi Mắt Người Sơn Tây’ received an enthusiastic reception.

A portrait of Quang Dũng.

In Saigon, the song quickly became a musical phenomenon, with Phạm Đình Chương (performing as Hoài Bắc) and vocalists Thái Thanh and Duy Trác establishing it as one of the era's most beloved compositions. ‘Đôi Mắt Người Sơn Tây’ is a symbol of love for homeland, longing, and the aspiration for peace. Despite weathering numerous historical upheavals, the song has preserved its artistic value and emotional resonance, becoming an essential piece in the treasury of Vietnamese music.

‘Áo Anh Sứt Chỉ Đường Tà’ | Phạm Duy, Hữu Loan

‘Áo Anh Sứt Chỉ Đường Tà’ (Your Shirt Is Torn at the Hem’s Seam), composed by Phạm Duy in 1971, is a poignant musical adaptation of the communist poet Hữu Loan’s 1949 poem ‘Màu Tím Hoa Sim’ (The Purple Color of Myrtle Flowers).

Hữu Loan (1916–2010) wrote the poem in 1949, during Vietnam’s anti-colonial war against France. Then a member of Việt Minh, Hữu Loan drew inspiration from the tragic death of his first wife, Lê Đỗ Thị Ninh, shortly after their marriage. The poem, written to mourn her loss, is a deeply personal elegy. Like Quang Dũng's ‘Mắt Người Sơn Tây,’ it focuses on the intimate sorrow of a soldier rather than glorifying the collective resistance.

I returned but did not find her
Mother sits beside the golden grave
The flower vase from our wedding day
Has become an incense holder

The poem’s initial circulation was informal, passed among friends and soldiers, as its personal tone clashed with Việt Minh’s preference for propaganda. Its publication was delayed until 1990, when it was included in the poet's only poetry collection ever published. The poem’s emphasis on individual emotion over political ideology made it a subtle act of resistance. It aligned with Hữu Loan’s later involvement in cultural dissent. In 1956, the poet joined Nhân Văn–Giai Phẩm. The movement’s suppression cast a long shadow over Hữu Loan’s career, but his work gained renewed appreciation after cultural reforms in 1986, when his name was quietly rehabilitated.

Elvis Phương's performance of ‘Áo Anh Sứt Chỉ Đường Tà.’ Video via Phuong Nam Phim YouTube page. 

Phạm Duy adapted the piece into ‘Áo Anh Sứt Chỉ Đường Tà’ in 1971, two decades after meeting Hữu Loan in a war zone. His composition blends multiple musical elements to capture both tragedy and heroism, closely following the poem's emotional depth. First performed by Thái Thanh in 1971 for the “Shotguns 25” album, followed by Elvis Phương in “Shotguns 26,” the song became a cultural phenomenon in South Vietnam. Its popularity among youth and intellectuals stemmed from its universal themes of love and loss, offering solace in a war-weary society.

A Portrait of the Poet Hữu Loan.

The performance of ‘Áo Anh Sứt Chỉ Đường Tà’ varies significantly between Vietnam and the Vietnamese diaspora, reflecting differing political sensitivities. In Vietnam, the song is often performed with its original lyrics, including terms like “bộ đội” (North Vietnamese soldiers) and “kháng chiến” (resistance war). These terms anchor the song in its historical context, referencing the anti-colonial struggle and the soldier’s life depicted in the poem.

In the diaspora, particularly among communities that left Vietnam after reunification, performances often adapt the lyrics to avoid associations with the communist regime. For example, “bộ đội” is replaced with “quân đội” (a general term for military), and “kháng chiến” is replaced with “chiến đấu” (fighting). A notable instance is Elvis Phương’s 1993 performance on Paris by Night 19; the rendition is often praised for its emotional delivery and subtle lyric adjustments to suit diasporic audiences. These changes reflect the complex sentiments of Vietnamese abroad, many of whom harbor reservations about communism.

‘Người Con Gái Việt Nam Da Vàng’ | Trịnh Công Sơn

‘Người Con Gái Việt Nam Da Vàng’ (The Yellow-Skinned Vietnamese Girl), composed by Trịnh Công Sơn (1939–2001), is a poignant anti-war song published in the late 1960s, during the height of the war agains the US. It depicts the suffering and resilience of Vietnamese women during wartime.

A young Trịnh Công Sơn.

The song appeared in Trịnh Công Sơn’s collection “Ca Khúc Da Vàng” (Golden Skin Songs), a series of anti-war compositions. Its release coincided with escalating violence, including events like the 1968 Tết Offensive, making it a resonant cry against the war’s brutality. Frequently performed at university campuses in southern Vietnam, it faced censorship from the Republic of Vietnam for its pacifist message, which authorities viewed as subversive. Despite this, its emotional depth and universal appeal, amplified by Khánh Ly’s soulful renditions, made it a cultural touchstone.

Trịnh Công Sơn's recording of ‘Người Con Gái Việt Nam Da Vàng.’  Video via JM JM YouTube channel.

The lyrics portray a young woman who loves her homeland deeply, likened to “đồng lúa chín” (ripe rice fields), yet is burdened by sorrow, with “nước mắt lưng dòng” (tears streaming down) and a heart filled with “resentment” due to the war's devastation:

She's never known a peaceful homeland
She's never seen Vietnam as it once was
She's never sung folk songs even once
She only has a heart filled with resentment and anger

Trịnh Công Sơn, Vietnam’s most celebrated songwriter, began his career with the 1958 hit ‘Ướt Mi’ (Teary Lashes), but his anti-war songs, including ‘Người Con Gái Việt Nam Da Vàng’ and ‘Gia Tài Của Mẹ’ defined his legacy. Despite censorship from both South and post-1975 Socialist Vietnam, his music, performed by artists like Khánh Ly and later Hồng Nhung, gained widespread acclaim. His melancholic songs about love and postwar reconciliation, such as ‘Nối Vòng Tay Lớn’ (Joining Hands), sung on Saigon radio on April 30, 1975 to mark reunification from his own perspective. 

‘Về Đây Nghe Em’ | Trần Quang Lộc

‘Về Đây Nghe Em’ (Come Back To Me), composed by Trần Quang Lộc (1949–2020), was crafted in the early 1970s in Saigon. Trần Quang Lộc, a young musician in his early twenties, was deeply moved by A Khuê’s poem from the 1970 collection “Vàng Bay.” Living in wartime Saigon, he earned a living playing music in tea rooms and bars, where he witnessed the stark contrast between traditional Vietnamese simplicity and the westernized urban culture. This societal shift, coupled with the poem’s evocative imagery, inspired him to set the words to music one sleepless night, creating a melody that captured both nostalgia and a yearning for cultural reconnection.

Tuấn Ngọc's performance of ‘Về Đây Nghe Em.’ Video via Thuy Nhan YouTube page.

The song’s lyrics paint a nostalgic picture of rural Vietnam. It includes images of traditional attire like áo the (a long tunic), wooden clogs, and simple staples like corn and potatoes. It urges listeners to reconnect with their heritage through “ca dao” (folk poetry), “hạt lúa mới" (newly harvested rice), and the innocence of childhood songs. The refrain “Về đây nghe em” is a heartfelt plea for cultural authenticity. It reflects a desire to preserve “Vietnam-ness” in a time of upheaval. The song’s humanistic message like “Để hận thù người người lắng xuống” (let hatred subside), resonates with a universal longing for understanding.

A portrait of Trần Quang Lộc.

Come back to me, come back to me
Come back and stand crying by the sorrowful river
Carrying people's hearts back to their homeland
Carrying souls into the cool stream
Carrying honesty into deception
And gathering flowers to express gratitude
All becomes desolate when we've finally met

While it was not explicitly a protest song, the song's call for returning to simpler, more traditional values can be seen as a subtle critique of the war’s disruption and the western cultural influences flooding Saigon. Its significance during the war lies in its ability to offer solace and a sense of identity to those grappling with loss and change.

In closing

The songs featured in this article transcend political divides and carrying the soul of Vietnam across generations and continents. They speak to universal experiences of love, loss, and longing for peace. For reconciliation to be possible, I believe we must accept that truth itself is multi-faceted. Belonging to a later generation, I wasn't born into the hatred and tragedy of the past. How should I regard the legacy of the generations before me, after years of conflict and bloodshed?

Today, as young Vietnamese from both homeland and diaspora connect through shared cultural touchstones, we inhabit this space together. These compositions aren't relics of division but bridges to understanding. I believe they are our legacy to the end of history, some of the finest sounds humanity has ever created.

War photographs, often viewed as windows into the past tragedies, are believed to offer an immediate representation of reality. But what lies beyond the frame? What purpose did these images serve, and who were they meant for?

Most of us, especially those who grew up in Vietnam, at some point, have encountered countless black-and-white photographs and video footage of the American War — intense battlefields and the sounds of explosions broadcast through historical movies and documentaries. Although the war ended decades ago, these images still carry a powerful impact and somehow continue to haunt our minds today. For some, images of war can trigger emotional responses and become overwhelming. It can be difficult to remain conscious enough to comprehend and engage on a deeper level with the context beyond the frame. In those moments, the surrounding histories seem to fade, as if only the “truth” presented in front of us is what matters.

Installation view of ‘A Radial System’ at Dogma Collection.

Dogma Collection’s latest exhibition, “A Radial System,” brings together a series of photographs taken during the American War by foreign and Vietnamese journalists in the 1960s and 1970s, highlighting how photojournalists from both sides captured scenes of the battlefields, and how the images were deployed and circulated by the media, and consumed by the public at the time. Placed in dialogues with the historical photographs are works by contemporary artists Nguyễn Trinh Thi, Nguyễn Phương Linh and An-My Lê, from the collection of Nguyen Art Foundation. The exhibition offers the audience another perspective of how such images are consumed in today’s mass media, often shaped by particular agendas, and how we position ourselves when viewing and reinterpreting these images in the present day. The exhibition was held in partnership with the “Sensing Photography: Vietnam & Vectors of Global Histories” symposium (February 21–28, 2025), organized by Trâm Lương (Fulbright University Vietnam) and Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn (Konstfack & KTH Royal Institute of Technology).

Installation view of ‘A Radial System’ at Dogma Collection.

The exhibition title takes art critic John Berger’s essay ‘Uses of Photography’ as a point of departure. In his essay, Berger challenges the notion of photography as a linear medium that simply captures a moment or presents a single argument. He argues that photographs should reflect how memory works — radially. In other words, an image should be perceived and considered from personal, political, economic, dramatic, everyday, and historic perspectives. In the curatorial text, curator Minh Nguyễn states: “One approach is to present them (the images) ‘radially,’ alongside juxtaposing images and by opposing viewpoints, to break through their familiarity.” Throughout the exhibitions, photographs taken by western journalists are placed next to those by Vietnamese journalists, offering the audience the contrasting approaches in terms of composition, the vantage point of where the photos were taken, and how the photographs capture and portray human experience on battlefields.

Installation view of ‘A Radial System’ at Dogma Collection.

Photos taken by foreign and western journalists predominantly focused on American soldiers in action on the battlefield, also capturing their facial expressions of fear and exhaustion. When Vietnamese soldiers and ordinary civilians appeared in the frame, their images were frequently dehumanized, shown as victims of war or defeated figures, with an emphasis on suffering and devastation. These photographs were typically taken on the American side of the battlefield and centering on US military operations, including ground-level combat scenes, bombing raids, soldiers parachuting from helicopters, aerial views of towns and battlefields shot from aircrafts.

Henri Huet (1927–1971). ‘US Paratrooper, War Zone D’. May 14, 1966.

Installation view of ‘A Radial System’ at Dogma Collection.

In contrast, photographs taken by Vietnamese first-generation photojournalists — most of whom were employed by the state-run Vietnam News Agency (VNA) — offered a completely different visual narrative. These images focused on the daily lives of soldiers and ordinary people, presenting a more humanizing and intimate portrayal of life during wartime, while also promoting the beauty and vision of a socialist revolution. They conveyed a strong sense of community, resilience, and solidarity, highlighting the strength and spirit of people supporting one another through hardship, with an unwavering belief in eventual victory. The photographs featured in this exhibition were captured close to the ground, depicting deep forest camps, makeshift battlefield hospitals, rural villages, trucks traveling along the Hồ Chí Minh Trail, and moments of enemy aircraft being shot down.

Left: Võ An Khánh (1936–2023). ‘A performing arts class held by the Propaganda Department of the Southwest Region in the midst of U Minh Forest during enemy’s attacks’ (1971).
Right: Tim Page (1944–2022). ‘Widow and KIA husband evacuated to Quang Ngai airstrip’ (April 1965).

Unlike western photojournalists, who had access to high-quality cameras, high-speed films suited for low-light conditions, and the freedom to move in and out of war zones, Vietnamese photojournalists received limited technical training in analog photography and were often separated from their families for years while both reporting and supporting military operations. Developing their images involved long, dangerous journeys under the constant threat of airstrikes, with photo processing carried out in makeshift darkrooms set up in air-raid shelters. Meanwhile, large amounts of battlefield photographs and footage captured by western photojournalists were transported daily to professional labs via commercial flights.

Installation view of ‘A Radial System’ at Dogma Collection.

The differences in technical resources and political agenda on each side explain the contrasting approaches to newspaper headlines and the images circulated by respective news outlets. As showcased in the exhibition, while images of graphic violence and destruction were widely circulated in magazines such as LIFE, with headlines like “Saigon: Explosion by a Brazen Enemy” portraying the soldiers and civilians’ struggle against terrorist attacks, photographs published in Vietnamese news bulletins — such as those by the Central Workshop for Propaganda — were accompanied by headlines like “New Spirit of Construction” or “The Heroic North Defeating the US on the Transportation Front,” emphasising resilience and the will towards victory.

Nguyễn Trinh Thi. ‘Landscape Series #1’ (2013). Collection of Nguyen Art Foundation.

Works by Nguyễn Trinh Thi, Nguyễn Phương Linh and An-My Lê were set in dialogue with the war photographs throughout the exhibition, supporting the curatorial narrative and bridging the past and present. In ‘Landscape Series’ (2013), Nguyễn Trinh Thi recontextualizes photographs from online Vietnamese newspapers, each depicting a person pointing at something from a past event, a location, or something that is missing. Nguyễn Phương Linh’s ‘Sanctified Cloud’ (2013) evokes a multi-channel newsroom setup, with soft, blue, and cloud-like ethereal forms — which in fact, are photographs of bomb explosions. By detaching the original photographs and removing context from their original narratives, the works demonstrate how visual information can be manipulated to serve specific agendas, and how mass media can transform destruction and violence into abstraction, which is then consumed by the public. Towards the end of the exhibition, An-My Lê’s large-format black-and-white photographs ‘Tiger Cage’ — from “Small Wars” series (1999–2002) — document the staged performances by war re-enactment hobbyists in the forest of the American South. Resembling the nature of war photography, her works raise the questions regarding the purpose of war reenactment, whether it “represents morbid fascination or serves as catharsis, a way to process traumatic history.” 

Nguyễn Phương Linh. ‘Sanctified Cloud’ (2013). 195 UV-digital print on handmade ceramic sheets. Collection of Nguyen Art Foundation.

An-My Lê. ‘Tiger Cage’, from Small Wars (1999 - 2002). Collection of Nguyen Art Foundation.

This April marks the 50^th anniversary of Vietnam’s Reunification Day (April 30, 1975). Across the city center, roads are being closed and stages are built in front of Dinh Độc Lập (the Independence Palace), making way for parades and preparations for this historic national celebration. Against this backdrop, and in alignment with this significant milestone, the exhibition reflects on how our country has been shaped and deeply defined by a long history of turbulence, warfare, and revolutions spanning centuries, where countless lives were sacrificed for the peaceful time we experience today.

Installation view of ‘A Radial System’ at Dogma Collection.

Yet, the exhibition is not about war photographs themselves, but about questioning the real purpose of real-time photography through “battlefield lenses.” In a world where history seems to echo through contemporary conflicts — and where those images are rapidly circulated on digital platforms today — these historical war photographs continue to hold a dialogue between the past, present and future, shaping our collective memory, national identity and ways of seeing. Perhaps, at this moment, it becomes more important to ask ourselves: how do we remember, what do we choose to remember, and how do we move forward from here?

Photos by Dương Gia Hiếu courtesy of Dogma Collection.

“A Radial System” is now on view at Dogma Collection until June 12, 2025. More exhibition info can be found on the website and Facebook page. 

“You’re gonna make me cry. That’s awesome,” Liz Mitchell exclaimed. Overwhelmed with disbelief, she covered her face and then clutched her black satin dress tightly. It was a rare moment of uplifting musical goodness when the past and the present of Vietnam’s music scene collided.

Mitchell, now 65, used to be the lead singer of euro disco group Boney M, a West Germany-based vocal sensation that has stolen the hearts of generations of Vietnamese since their early days in the 1970s. Two years ago, the quartet charmed the local audience once again with a cozy concert at the Vietnam National Convention Center in Hanoi.

As soon as Mitchell started humming the first few bars of their 1978 chart-topper ‘Rivers of Babylon,’ the entire auditorium stood up and joined in. If one is familiar with how older Vietnamese enjoy music performances, they would realize that this was akin to a lunar eclipse, albeit twice as rare and no less spectacular to watch. It was a full house, with parents in their 50s, multi-generational families, and even the odd young adult here and there — everyone was up and dancing like no one was watching.

Boney M performed ‘Rivers of Babylon’ in Hanoi in 2016. Video via YouTube user Bui Dzung.

Boney M’s 2016 line-up wasn’t the original team that enchanted Vietnam back in the day: Jamaican-born Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett; Maizie Williams from Montserrat and Bobby Farrell from Aruba, both tiny islands from the Caribbean. Mitchell performed their hit songs alone — from ‘Daddy Cool’ to ‘Rasputin’ to ‘Painter Man’ — with three new band members from the 2000s.

It wasn’t the same. In her 60s now, Mitchell’s megawatt smile still lit up the room, inspiring everyone to immerse in the lurid high-adrenaline energy of ‘Daddy Cool.’ Nonetheless, it was still obvious that without her original bandmates, the show lacked a certain je ne sais quoi that made Boney M’s music so enticing.

West German singer-songwriter Frank Farian created the quartet in 1976, but only as a “front” for his actual songs. Most subsequent songs by Boney M only contained vocals by Mitchell and Barrett while the other two played the role of “entertainers” on stage. Contrary to common belief, the deep male voice in the group’s most iconic single ‘Rasputin’ is not Farrell’s, but a digitally augmented version of Farian’s.

During the next few years, the quartet blew up in Europe, with their reputation reaching as far as India, Southeast Asia and Australia. In 1978 Boney M's  ‘Rivers of Babylon’, ‘Rasputin,’ and their Christmas earworm ‘Mary’s Boy Child – Oh My Lord’ all became No. 1 hits in many European markets.

The band in 1978: (from left to right) Marcia Barrett, Maizie Williams, Liz Mitchell and Bobby Farrell. Photo via Running the Wolf's Rant.

Boney M’s Vietnam “invasion,” however, started four years later in 1982, the year of España '82 — the 1982 FIFA World Cup held in Spain. If the various victories of Vietnam’s U23 national team as part of the AFC tournament in January are any indication, the country loves football and all things related to the “king of sport.”

The band’s Russia-inspired single ‘Rasputin’ became a special part of Vietnam thanks to España 82. During the course of the football tournament, local broadcasters used to play ‘Rasputin’ exclusively in the waiting period before any live match, exposing millions of sports aficionados to Boney M’s music and paving the way for their infectious disco tunes to dominate local pop culture for decades.

The song is perhaps the band’s most confounding hit: it’s a mashup of tunes and lyrics that take elements from various cultures to create a catchy feverish record. It got its namesake from Grigori Rasputin, a friend and advisor of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Rasputin’s life remains shrouded in mystery, no thanks to the song’s sensationalistic lyrics that painted him as an adulterer, mystic healer and political mastermind. Russian influence didn't end with the lyrics: they also incorporated balalaikas — a Russian string instrument — into the track, which bears heavy influence from a Turkish folk song.

The original music video of 'Rasputin' was filmed in Moscow, a rather strange choice of setting considering the song was banned in the Soviet Union for political reasons. Video via YouTube user DJMarky.

From the 1980s all the way until the early 2000s, you couldn't go to a wedding in Vietnam without hearing ‘Daddy Cool,’ ‘Ma Baker’ or ‘Rasputin.’ The band’s Christmas song ‘Mary’s Boy Child’ also found its way into every church, coffee shop and department store in November and December.

If one were to sit down and really listen, perhaps without the commotion of Vietnamese weddings, like I did before penning this article, they might be shocked that anybody could decide to spice up their nuptials with these dark, grisly tunes: ‘Ma Baker’ is about a robbery while ‘Rasputin’ has lyrics referring to the titular Rasputin as “Russia’s greatest love machine.”

The truth is — much like the way today’s millennials in Vietnam go gaga over Korean bubble-gum pop — hardly anyone really understood or cared enough to try to decipher their lyrics. The songs' pure glittery happiness is perfect dance fodder, and that was enough.

This article was first published in 2018.

I’ve always loved marveling at the colorful tranh kiếng hung in our altar room whenever I get a chance to visit my mother’s hometown. Since I was little, the paintings have been an indispensable part of my grandparents’ homestead. Tranh kiếng is present everywhere in people’s houses in the town, but I’ve never thought to ask who created unique art pieces that perfectly encapsulate the soul of the southern community.

When did tranh kiếng arrive in southern Vietnam?

I started by asking my grandpa about where he got the paintings, but he couldn’t remember their exact origin, just noting that they used to be really popular, especially during Tết, but they are rarely seen nowadays.

According to historical records, tranh kiếng, known as reverse glass paintings in English, started appearing in the 19^th century, brought into Vietnam by Chinese immigrants. At first, the works adorned the walls of The Imperial City in Huế during the reign of Emperor Minh Mạng. Emperor Thiệu Trị, the eldest son of Minh Mạng, commissioned artisans in China to create a set of 20 pieces featuring Huế’s most breathtaking landscapes alongside the emperor’s poetry. This gave rise to the name “Imperial Huế glass painting,” referring to the artworks enjoyed by the royal court and nobles in Huế.

When the 20^th century came, tranh kiếng showed up in Chợ Lớn for the first time, marking the beginning of the art form’s decades-long endurance in southern homes. Resettling in the Mekong Delta, some migrant families from Guangdong took glass paintings with them. They were often themed around deity worship, so the people treasured them as a piece of their spiritual heritage. Chợ Lớn-style tranh kiếng, thus, was first widely known as spiritual artworks, though over time, their subject matters expanded to include content espousing fortune, prosperity, and abundance.

A depiction of Guanyin, the Chinese interpretation of Avalokiteśvara, painted by Chinese artisans in 1920. Image via VnExpress.

In the 1920s, painters in Lái Thiêu (Bình Dương) managed to learn tranh kiếng-making techniques from Chinese artisans and began coming up with new designs catering to Vietnam’s local worshipping practice. Thanks to better localization, vibrant color palettes, and the novel incorporation of mother-of-pearl, Lái Thiêu quickly made a name for itself as the southern region’s top-tier producer and distributor.

Over the next decades, as Indochina’s first-ever railway was established in the south, linking Saigon with Mỹ Tho, tranh kiếng hopped on the train and spread across the Mekong Delta. One of the most enduring forms it’s taken in Mỹ Tho since then until now is ancestral worship decorations, which evolved from nine-frame carved and lacquered panels. The panels are often paired with a hoành phi board bearing the family name.

A set of nine-frame panels. Photo via Thanh Niên.

When they got to the Mekong Delta, tranh kiếng once again grew to adapt to the local cultures, resulting in more affordable genres of paintings featuring either landscapes or folk story characters like Thoại Khanh-Châu Tuấn, Lưu Bình-Dương Lễ, Phạm Công-Cúc Hoa, etc. These depictions usually attempted to replicate the illustration styles of artists like Hoàng Lương or Lê Trung, who brought the characters to life with their official artworks. Following this content expansion, tranh kiếng transcended their original purpose as worship art to become purely decorative objects, beautifying empty spaces in the home like dividers and chamber doors. In addition, in regions of the delta with significant Khmer communities, the subject matters of tranh kiếng were heavily influenced by Theravāda Buddhism.

Tranh kiếng as spiritual artworks. Photo via Báo Phụ Nữ.

Over decades of development, two main branches of tranh kiếng emerged — spiritual art and landscape art — catering to both the people’s needs for altar decoration and household decoration. Cultural Studies researcher Huỳnh Thanh Bình explained the rapid rise in popularity of this art form in southern Vietnam: “Southern Vietnam is a land of multiple cultures and ethnicities, so once tranh kiếng arrived here, it satisfied a need to decorate and worship during special occasions, especially ancestral worship art.”

Even though the main material for these paintings, glass, is called “kính” in Vietnamese, the people avoided the correct name but instead opted for an approximated term, “kiếng.” According to writer Lý Đợi, this is due to a long-enduring tradition of Vietnamese paying respect to important figures by avoiding using their names for common usage, or húy kỵ. In this case, Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh was a 17th-century military general who spearheaded the imperial army’s southward expansion efforts, credited with the founding of many townships in the south, including Saigon, and was widely considered a national hero. His birth name was Nguyễn Hữu Kính, so southern Vietnamese, out of respect for him, used alternative words for objects including “kính” and “cảnh.”

Tranh kiếng in the life of southern Vietnamese

Since it was first introduced to Vietnam, tranh kiếng has strongly taken root and flourished throughout southern localities as the people have accepted it as a familiar part of their daily life.

Decorative tranh kiếng works on a hủ tiếu cart run by Hoa Vietnamese vendors in the 1960s. Photo via VnExpress.

Painter and art historian Trang Thanh Hiền said of tranh kiếng’s main genres: “Just like other genres of traditional painting from Đông Hồ, Hàng Trống, Kim Hoàng or Làng Sình, southern Vietnam’s tranh kiếng often has four main themes: spiritual and worship art, ceremonial art, landscape art, and storytelling art. Of the four, the first category is the most widely developed, while the last is the rarest. It’s usually created to adorn wardrobe doors, bed frames, and Chinese-style noodle carts.”

Spiritual tranh kiếng can highlight subjects like Buddhist iconographies, ancestral worship, calligraphy, etc. It’s one of the most commonly seen art styles in temples, pagodas, or even churches in southern Vietnam. In private residences, tranh kiếng appears in altar rooms and family mausoleums. The people value these artworks as part of their spirituality and often choose designs that are calm and reverent in nature in hopes of peace and fortune. Every Tết, they are thoroughly cleaned as part of spring preparations.

Giang Lâm Ký, a multi-generational noodle cart in Tân Định Market. Photo via VNExpress.

Some of the most popular motifs on tranh kiếng on noodle carts depict Hằng Nga (The Moon Goddess) or peach-picking fairies. On carts selling sâm bổ lượng, a type of Hoa Vietnamese dessert, are scenes from Tam Quốc Diễn Nghĩa (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) — a historical fiction novel set in 14^th century China.

Creating a tranh kiếng, a reversal of expectations

For such a widely loved art form, tranh kiếng calls for very tricky techniques. Painting on paper might already be challenging for some, imagine the level of care brushing colors onto glass surfaces. The one technique that distinguishes tranh kiếng from other mediums is reverse-painting, which gives tranh kiếng its name in English. Pigments are layered onto the backside of the glass, so details that are closer to the viewers are actually on the bottom layer of the painting and are painted first. Painters, hence, need to plan ahead the order of each component of the painting.

Reverse-painting is the key technique in tranh kiếng. Photo via Báo An Giang.

In the traditional way of making tranh kiếng, artisans mix pigment powder with the seed oil of du đồng trees (Vernicia fordii) to create the paint. Only once the paint has dried can the final look of the painting be seen by turning the glass panel over. First, the painter sketches the design on tracing paper, nylon, or carton, and transfers the sketch onto the backside of the glass; though veteran artisans often sketch straight on the glass without a blueprint. The designs can be completely new or based on existing motifs. This step is called “tỉa tách” or “bắc chỉ” in Khmer.

The outline is left to dry, then the artisan will color the spaces using paintbrushes. The order of painting is also in reverse: foreground objects first, then background objects. According to Hoa traditions, seed oil-based paint was the medium of choice back in the day, but today most painters use commercially available epoxy or acrylic paints for convenience, cost-effectiveness, and endurance.

The keepers of old tranh kiếng

I’ve always been most amazed by the traditional painters of tranh kiếng because they have achieved a high level of painting skill without attending any formal art education. They got there thanks to family training, hard work, and generations of legacy experience.

Alas, their role in the creation of tranh kiếng is gradually diminishing due to the use of machines. It’s very likely that any random glass painting you buy from the market today was the product of automation from spray painting or screen printing techniques. This method renders more vivid and diverse colors at a third of the cost compared to traditional craft and is directly making artisans obsolete. Another factor is the weather, as large paintings require a long period in the sun to dry. The limited income can’t guarantee a living wage for painters, so most have left the craft.

Trần Tiên, owner of Vĩnh Huê, a famous tranh kiếng store in Chợ Lớn. Photo via Thanh Niên.

This dire reality has made me much more appreciative of artisans who have held onto their careers. For them, painting on glass is not just a way to make a living, but also a quest to protect their family legacy and the invaluable cultural wealth of the people. In Bà Vệ Craft Village in An Giang Province, one of the pioneer communities of tranh kiếng in the southwestern region, third-generation painters are still creating artworks by hand to preserve the local craft.

When it comes to Chợ Lớn, the breed ground of tranh kiếng once upon a time, the situation is less optimistic: only one or two families are still making tranh kiếng the old way. Vĩnh Huê is one of such stores. In the current era, tranh kiếng is no longer the omnipresent household decoration or past decades when every home had at least one of them. Still, they exist in the altar rooms of old homesteads thanks to the endurance of the medium. Thanks to a resurgence in youth interest in traditional Vietnamese culture, a number of exhibitions showcasing tranh kiếng have been organized, introducing old artworks by Kinh, Hoa, and Khmer artisans from as far back as the 1920s to younger audience members. More hands-on activities like tranh kiếng workshops are also established to give young Vietnamese a glimpse into the creative heritage of their ancestors.

A tranh kiếng exhibition in Saigon. Photo via Phụ Nữ.

It’s impossible to predict how long tranh kiếng will remain in our lives or how long artisans can afford to hang on to their age-old trade. There’s one thing I know for sure, I will always admire the glass paintings on our altar, cause I believe that as long as there is one person appreciating them, their traditional beauty will remain.

An exhibition offering a rare glimpse into the artistic life of Hàm Nghi, Vietnam's exiled emperor who dedicated his life to art, with brushstrokes and landscapes reflecting his deep longing towards a distant homeland that he could never return to.

Installation view of “Trời, Non, Nước | Allusive Panorama.” Photo courtesy of Luxuo.

Since March 26, 2025, Kiến Trung Palace of the Imperial City of Huế has welcomed thousands of visitors per day for the special exhibition “Trời, Non, Nước | Allusive Panorama,” honoring the legacy of Emperor Hàm Nghi through more than 20 paintings from 10 different private collections. Art Republik Vietnam, in collaboration with the Hue Monuments Conservation Centre and the French Institute in Vietnam, organized the exhibition as a symbolic homecoming for the works of an exiled emperor, now returning to the ancient royal palace. Curated by art researcher Ace Lê and Dr. Amandine Dabat, the Emperor’s 5^th descendant, the exhibition remains open to the public for just two weeks, offering a rare and fleeting glimpse into Hàm Nghi’s artistic legacy and representing a significant milestone in the work of restoring Vietnam’s cultural heritage.

Paysage aux Cyprès (Landscape with cypress trees) (Menthon-Saint-Bernard), 1906. 27 x 40,5 cm, oil on canvas. Photo courtesy of Kâ- Mondo.

Through the eyes of the Vietnamese people, Hàm Nghi is widely recognized as a patriotic ruler who played a key role in the Cần Vương movement (1885–1896), resisting French colonial rule to reclaim national sovereignty. Ascending the throne at the age of 13 under the regency of Nguyễn Văn Tường and Tôn Thất Thuyết, he expressed a deep sense of patriotism from an early age. Despite his royal lineage, he spent his childhood with his mother outside of the palace, an experience that kept him from being blinded by power and wealth. His reign, albeit short-lived, unfolded during a period of dual crisis: internal conflicts within the royal court and the external political turmoil caused by the French colonial invasion.

Portrait of Emperor Hàm Nghi, 1896.
Photo courtesy of Archives nationales d'outre-mer, Fonds Capek.

The exhibition unfolds across multiple areas within Kiến Trung Palace, beginning on the upper floor with a calligraphy room. This calligraphy collection traces the timeline leading up to Hàm Nghi’s capture and exile by the French, where he would spend the remaining 55 years of his life far from the motherland. Positioned on the upper floor above the reception area — where artifacts used by the imperial family are exhibited — this space features a collection of calligraphy works with poems written in support of the Cần Vương movement.

Installation view of “Trời, Non, Nước | Allusive Panorama.”
Photo courtesy of Luxuo, Bảo Nguyễn/Annam Production.

Installation view of “Trời, Non, Nước | Allusive Panorama.”
Photo courtesy of Luxuo, Bảo Nguyễn/Annam Production.

Little is known about the Emperor’s life after being exiled to French Algeria in 1888 at the age of 18, where he remained a political prisoner under strict surveillance. To cope with loneliness, isolation and the ever-present control of the colonial authority, he devoted himself to art, training under Marius Reynaud (1860–1935) and later absorbing influences from Impressionism and Post-Impressionism during his time in Paris. He also studied sculpture under the renowned Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), though this exhibition focuses solely on his paintings. Hàm Nghi signed his paintings with the name Tử Xuân 子春 (“the son of spring”), a childhood name given by his family members and close relatives.

Upon arrival at the main exhibition space, visitors are immediately drawn to the luminous and dreamy color palette of Hàm Nghi’s oil paintings, created between the 1910s and 1920s in this exhibition. Dominated by landscapes and nature, his works inherit the influence of Impressionism, directly aligning with the exhibition title “Trời, Non, Nước” (Sky, Mountains, Water). According to the curatorial text, Hàm Nghi was the first Vietnamese artist to receive formal academic training in western academic techniques, preceding the establishment of the Indochina School of Fine Arts in 1924. While his works do not overly depict traditional Vietnamese imagery, the subtle details within his landscapes evoke the familiarity and nostalgia of Vietnamese rural landscape, revealing the insight into the construction of his personal and artistic identity. Notably, the human presence remains almost non-existent in most of his paintings, further emphasizing a sense of solitude.

A part of the exhibition “Trời, Non, Nước | Allusive Panorama.”
Photo courtesy of Bảo Nguyễn/Annam Production.

From a technical perspective, the strength of Hàm Nghi’s landscape paintings lies in his mastery of light and atmospheric effect. His meticulous studies of the sky, sunrise and sunset, combined with carefully composed horizontal lines, create a sense of depth. The harmony between light and shadow is particularly evident in the reflections of natural elements upon the water; the reflections of natural elements capture both its transparency and the subtle contrast between luminosity and darkness. Hàm Nghi embraced the Impressionist movement’s significance of painting en plein air, and prioritized the immediate emotions and fleeting moments as they unfolded before him.

Champs de blé (Wheat field), 1913. 31 x 39 cm. Oil on canvas. Photo courtesy of Lynda Trouvé.

Paysage Algérien (Algerian Landscape), 1902. 24.1 x 35.4 cm. Oil on canvas. Photo courtesy of Kâ-Mondo.

Beyond the image of an emperor, Hàm Nghi’s works reveal a deeply personal side: one of a human being shaped by emotions released through the vastness of nature, one who was caught in the tides of political turmoil that dictated his fate. The subject matters in his paintings reflect his inner world, infused with subtle metaphors of longing and displacement: an ancient solitary tree standing alone in silence, an empty path without the human presence, reflecting his path as a ruler, the life where he was granted the title of a ruler, yet never had any power to make his own decisions. The elements in his works, woven together with the curatorial narrative, embody the key elements: sky — a symbol of far-reaching vision; mountain — standing tall and steadily, even in solitude; and water — fluid and ever-changing, reflecting all matters, including life itself. To be an emperor is to possess a great vision, overseeing the vast landscape of one’s homeland.

Meanwhile, back in his homeland, The Cần Vương movement, albeit weakened over the years, persisted until 1896, nearly another decade after Hàm Nghi’s exile. Despite its eventual failure due to lack of strategy, centralized leadership and military inferiority, the movement remains a testament to the resilience and the patriotic spirit of the people against colonial rule, even after their leaders sacrificed and faded away from power.

Installation view of ‘Trời, Non, Nước | Allusive Panorama’.
Photo courtesy of Bảo Nguyễn/Annam Production.

The significance of this exhibition, made possible by years of research and the dedication of many individuals and organizations, extends beyond the story of Hàm Nghi as an emperor in exile who never lost his connection to Vietnam, despite being displaced and stripped of political influence. His legacy lives on through his art, a reflection of perseverance, identity and the spirit of a nation.

By force, an emperor may be taken away from his homeland. However, his homeland can never be taken away from his heart and soul.

“Trời, Non, Nước | Allusive Panorama” is now on view at the Kiến Trung Palace of the Imperial City of Huế until April 6, 2025. More information on the exhibition can be found here on the website and Facebook page.

Despite being three distinct elements with their own texture, depth, and presence, lacquer, paper, and earth are all rooted in nature. Rather than searching for hidden meanings, Lý Trực Sơn’s solo exhibition at Vin Gallery invites us to engage with the works instinctively and experience the interplay of pigments, natural elements, and form, shaped by the artist’s innovative process and the passage of time.

Lý Trực Sơn’s latest solo exhibition at Vin Gallery, “Lacquer - Paper - Earth,” offers a glimpse into the artist’s decades-long commitment and exploration of materials and forms. This marks his first solo exhibition in Saigon, comprising works on dó paper created since the 1990s, lacquer pieces from 2014, and the most recent Earth series in the 2020s until the present. The exhibition title is straightforward, reflecting the core materials of his artistic practices, rather than implying any hidden meanings. More than a presentation of finished works, the exhibition stands as a testament to his constant dedication and experimentation with pigments and different materials, each layer revealing the depth of his creative process and artistic refinement.

Installation view of “Lacquer - Paper - Earth” at Vin Gallery.

Originally trained in a traditional academic setting at Vietnam College of Fine Arts (now Vietnam University of Fine Arts), Lý Trực Sơn’s artistic journey took a transformative turn during his studies in France and Germany (1989–1998). His time abroad was a long journey, a relentless pursuit of modernity and self-exploration toward the path of his own distinctive artistic language. Upon his return to Vietnam in 1998, he spent the next decade working with lacquer and dó paper, holding multiple exhibitions. Abstraction was not his initial focus; however, it emerged gradually while he was experimenting with natural pigments and mixed media, pushing the boundaries of traditional materials and forms.

Upon entering the gallery, we are immediately drawn to the Earth series: mural-like abstract paintings, with earthy tones and rough, uneven surfaces. The artist created these distinct textures by gathering natural materials like soil and stones from the hills and mountains, along with scallop shells and vegetables. He grinds them, mixes them with an adhesive, and layers the dried mixture onto the canvas. Through this process, the textures and forms emerge naturally, evoking a raw presence that reflects their deep connection with nature.

Không đề 3 (2023). Mixed media. 150cm x 150cm.

Nhịp điệu Lam 2 (2023). Mixed media. 150cm x 150cm.

Tiếng vọng 2, 2024. Mixed media. 140cm x 110cm.

The artist’s abstract lacquer series, created in 2014, marks a departure from tradition in both composition and color. Moving away from traditional motifs and the customary red and gold palette of Vietnamese lacquer art, Lý Trực Sơn instead embraces black and blue as his dominant tones, while incorporating softened eggshell inlays to create delicate white details. Although the works may contain hidden messages that require full interpretation, they evoke a profound sense of vastness — one that subtly recalls the universe and our origins, where humans, nature and the unknown co-exist within the infinite expanse.

Left: Harmonized blue series #3. Lacquer. 120 x 80cm.
Right: Harmonized blue series #2. Lacquer. 120 x 90cm.

Dó paper, a traditional Vietnamese material, has been central to Lý Trực Sơn’s practice for decades, even before his years abroad. The essence of his presented works lies in his use of natural pigments and a unique gradual dyeing technique, creating delicate, layered spaces that shift between translucency and density. His approach embraces the traditional qualities of dó paper with minimal lines and forms, allowing natural pigments to create subtle tonal variations. When viewed up close, soft flows and gradients of color emerge, weaving through the layers of paper and evoking a dreamlike, almost meditative effect.

Watercolour on Dzo Paper No 1 (framed), 1994. Dó paper. 69cm x 82cm.

Natural colour on Dzo Paper Vertical Series No 1 (Framed), 2011. Dó paper. 132cm x 102cm.

The balance between materials in this exhibition — lacquer, dó paper, and earth — reflects Lý Trực Sơn’s deep engagement with time, space, and human touch that shapes the transformation of materials through his works. Each material carries its own essence, yet they are all interconnected. His self-made pigments, infused with evolving organic elements, emphasize this connection. Through his work, he invites us into the vastness of nature and the diversity of the world we inhabit, a space where materials, forms, and human emotions subtly intertwine, engaging the viewer in a quiet yet evocative dialogue.

“The path to finding ‘the uniqueness’ is the most difficult one in the journey of creating abstract art. Whereas making something beautiful is actually quite simple, it’s pretty easy because that understanding is about structure and technique — you can learn. But for a good painter to become an artist, they must be able to do things that cannot be ‘learned.’ At the same time, what that person is able to do, no one else can be taught. Only then are you truly unique,” Lý Trực Sơn shared in an interview with Vin Gallery.

Màu ngọc, 2024. Mixed media. 140cm x 110cm.

To view Lý Trực Sơn’s works, one should not attempt to overanalyze, decode, or search for any hidden meanings. Instead, his art invites us into the meditative “voidness” within the earthy color fields, the layered translucency of dó paper, and the deep, glossy surfaces of black and blue lacquer. It is not solely about the message the artist conveys but rather about how he navigates through different materials — earth, lacquer and paper — each carrying its own weight of time, transformation, and presence. By engaging with his abstract art instinctively, we connect through feeling rather than analysis, allowing the works, like living entities, to speak for themselves.

[Images courtesy of Vin Gallery.]

“Lacquer – Paper – Earth” by Lý Trực Sơn is now on view at Vin Gallery until April 1, 2025. More exhibition info can be found on the Facebook page.

Amidst shifting social currents, industrialized landscapes, and a fast-paced world, how does a community preserve its heritage, rewrite histories, and confront colonial legacies? In this long-term collaboration with the Jrai community, ‘Angin Cloud’ by Art Labor explores these questions through a multi-floor installation at National Gallery Singapore that poetically intertwines Gia Rai (Jrai) beliefs, traditions, and environmental change.

Spanning from street level to the basement of the Padang Atrium, and suspended from the ceiling of the passageway connecting the former Supreme Court and City Hall buildings, Art Labor’s latest installation, ‘Angin Cloud’ (2025), immediately captures visitors’ attention upon their arrival at the National Gallery Singapore. Developed as part of the OUTBOUND series — unique and site-responsive artwork commissions by leading artists from around the world that reimagine key entrances of the museum — the installation imagines the rural industrialization of a hillside in Vietnam's Central Highlands. It debuted as part of Light to Night Singapore in January 2025, an annual festival organised by the museum as part of Singapore Art Week.

Installation view of ‘Angin Cloud’ at National Gallery Singapore.

Founded in 2012 by Phan Thảo Nguyên, Trương Công Tùng, and Arlette Quỳnh-Anh Trần, Art Labor collaborated with vn-a (visual network art and architecture), and Jrai artists Puih Glơh, Romah Aleo, Rahlan Loh, Rchâm Jeh, Siu Kin, Puih Hăn, Siu Lơn and Siu Huel to realize ‘Angin Cloud.’ Featuring Jrai wood sculptures, hammocks for reclining, and suspended pillars from the ceiling, this newly commissioned multi-floor wood sculptural installation marks the third phase of their ongoing decade-long collaboration with the Jrai community in the Central Highlands, following Jrai Dew and JUA.

Installation view of ‘Angin Cloud’ at National Gallery Singapore.

With a long history of environmental extraction driven by colonization, the landscape of Central Highlands has undergone successive waves of industrialization and economic development. Since the 1980s, the rapid expansion of industrial farming of commodity crops, such as peppercorn plantations, has led to the displacement of the Jrai and the reshaping of their land. In previous projects such as Jrai Dew and JUA, Art Labor has been working closely with the Jrai artists and community to conduct research, organize exhibitions, and develop artistic and cultural activities. Their works mostly incorporate elements related to coffee and rice, drawing from the region’s agricultural products to reflect on the changing landscape and the lived experiences of the Jrai people.

At the heart of ‘Angin Cloud’ lies the Jrai concept of “angin,” which refers to the dynamic potential for change found in the natural elements of water and air. The suspended pillars resemble the structures found in peppercorn plantations, while their dissolution into space suggests the evaporation of all matter with water into the air. Here, ‘Angin’ itself is not just a mere transformation, but a powerful force that confronts the viewers with the disappearing landscape of ancient jungles of Central Highlands.

Installation view of ‘Angin Cloud’ at National Gallery Singapore.

At the entrance on the street level, we encounter Jrai wood sculptures of human and animal figures, each with distinct expressions. According to Art Labor and curator Kathleen Ditzig, these sculptures are mostly used for funerals and house decorations, and also believed to provide spiritual protection, which would be abandoned together with the grave into nature after a ceremony Lễ bỏ mả that ended the mourning period. However, in ‘Angin Cloud,’ these sculptures take on a new purpose of self-expression and shift towards a modernist function as art objects.

Jrai wood sculptures featured in ‘Angin Cloud’ at National Gallery Singapore.

Meanwhile, visitors can recline in the hammocks placed in the basement of the Padang Atrium and gaze up at the suspended pillars above them. A common household object in Vietnam, hammocks can be found both indoors and outdoors, often serving as a place of rest. From this point of view, the installation appears to ascend the hillside and slowly dissolves into the air — a reflection of the evaporation of the forest and a gradual loss of cultural heritage. At the same time, this perspective can also be inverted: the installation can be seen as a cloud descending on the Padang Atrium, releasing Brutalist cement pillars like raindrops.

Installation view of ‘Angin Cloud’: the hammocks in the basement of the Padang Atrium.

The interplay between the farming structures and the architectural elements of the National Gallery Singapore is one of the key highlights of this installation. The building was constructed primarily with concrete and embodies the Neo-classical style from the British colonial period, while the Brutalist aesthetics of the suspended pillars, resembling farming structures of peppercorn plantations before the vines are cultivated, appear to evaporate into space. As the afternoon light filters through the glass entrance, their interaction creates a dreamlike visual effect, making the pillars seem like they are floating in space. Beyond its aesthetics, perhaps this serves as a quiet confrontation against authority, control, and colonial history embedded in the building’s architecture. The installation resonates with resistance and the enduring spirit of the Jrai community.

Details of suspended pillars in ‘Angin Cloud’ at National Gallery Singapore.

“Art Labor’s long-term collaboration with the Jrai draws into focus the complexities of how we write global art histories, gesturing at the national and regional frameworks that often leave out or instrumentalize particular communities. Art Labor's practice is both rigorous and rich in its consideration of how art in Southeast Asia can produce ethnographies. This is also a critical interest for National Gallery Singapore in terms of its role in making visible Southeast Asian art history internationally,” curator Kathleen Ditzig told Saigoneer.

Installation view of ‘Angin Cloud’ at National Gallery Singapore.

Through the lens of Jrai beliefs and cosmological concepts, Art Labor, together with the Jrai artists, have brought the visual and spatial experience of ‘Angin Cloud’ into the museum. By installing the works in a national monument with a colonial architectural legacy, they challenge the conventional conceptions of modern and contemporary art, while encouraging a deeper reflection on the frameworks that shape how we perceive art today. Their collaborative approach with the Jrai community also expands the possibilities of museology, offering alternative ways of thinking about complex histories and engaging with art in our world today.

[Photos courtesy of National Gallery Singapore.]

‘Angin Cloud’ is on view at the Padang Atrium of National Gallery Singapore until 30 November 2025. If you find yourself in Singapore, take the opportunity to explore the museum’s extensive Southeast Asian art collection, and don’t forget to pause at ‘Angin Cloud’ for an immersive and thought-provoking experience!

“I don’t make happy songs,” says Phúc, the lead singer and guitarist of Saigonese rock group COCC. He and I are sitting in the middle of the band’s “cave” — a homemade recording studio they began putting together ten years ago. “I dreamed about it for a long time,” Phúc says of the studio. “In 2015, when I finished this house, the vision came true. We invest in it all the time, buy a little bit here, buy a little bit there. We’re still adding and improving the system and the equipment.”

It’s quiet and cool in the cave, which is actually the basement of Phúc’s house. Dark blue curtains drape the walls. Acoustic panels are affixed to the ceiling. Instruments and equipment abound, but the general effect is one of order and tidiness. The other two band members — Quốc, the bassist, and Cường, the drummer — are here as well, tinkering with the drum kit. Above us, on the building’s ground floor, is the darkened office of Phúc’s private architecture business; his staff has gone home for the weekend. Beyond that is Phúc’s home. Everything he needs is here, in one place. And yet contained within this single unit are two disparate, clashing worlds — or perhaps two disparate, clashing Phúcs is the better way to put it. More on that presently.

COCC's home studio set-up. Photo by Michael Howard.

I first became aware of COCC a couple of years ago. I was rather late to the party: COCC have been a fixture of Saigon’s indie — or “underground,” if you like — music scene since releasing their debut record, “6 Giờ,” in 2011. It’s easy to see why. The band is indie in the original sense of the term, meaning their ideas, compositions, and production are all their own. The music is hard and raw, with an aggressive edge not commonly seen in Vietnamese music; yet it is distinctly Vietnamese. By design, it defies neat classification.

“OK, I’m Vietnamese, and I cannot copy other music,” he says. “So I combine influences. And I think that is the path for anyone to make their creative work. I don’t want to limit the language and the tones of Vietnamese [when I sing]. More and more, I find a way to combine everything together.”

“When I was young I listened to the music my father listened to,” Phúc recalls. “When I grew up I explored more. But at that time in Vietnam, in the 1980s and 1990s, people listened to Bon Jovi and Guns N’ Roses. We missed a lot of things. We missed post-punk, like Depeche Mode and the Cure. We missed bands like Tool, Nine Inch Nails, Rage Against the Machine. I had no idea. We had no internet. But I kept exploring. I listened to classical, blues, jazz.”

All of which had a hand in guiding COCC’s aesthetic vision. So too did traditional genres of Vietnamese music; Phúc mentions cải lương and dân ca specifically. 

Loài người bị điên | Insane Humans. Video via COCC's YouTube page.

“When I write music, I think, ‘OK, I’m Vietnamese, and I cannot copy other music,’” he says. “So I combine influences. And I think that is the path for anyone to make their creative work. I don’t want to limit the language and the tones of Vietnamese [when I sing]. More and more, I find a way to combine everything together.”

Phúc wears his hair cropped tight to his head, in a style that recalls a military crew cut, and he articulates his thoughts in a mild, soft-spoken tone, albeit with a few F-bombs tossed in. To look at him and hear him speak, one could be excused for thinking Phúc incapable of the “dark, angry” (his words) attitude that defines COCC’s image. He sings, and often screams, his lyrics into the microphone with a sort of desperate abandon, as though literally needing to get something off his chest. There’s a pugnacity in his on-stage manner that suggests deep inner reserves of disaffection, resentment, rebellion.

COCC - Live show at Le Cafe des Stagiaires, Jan 2025. Photo by KiCu KiCu.

Which brings me back to the point about the disparate worlds, the clashing Phúcs. How to reconcile Phúc the clean-cut, bespectacled architect with the feral and ferocious man behind COCC’s music? After all, they inhabit the same mind. Or do they? Phúc is happy to acknowledge the discrepancy. For him, it’s a simple matter of self-awareness, of recognizing — and, indeed, embracing — his own duality. We all have it. It’s the one Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about. “In my career as an architect,” he tells me, “I have to make other people happy and satisfied. In that world I have to kiss the client’s ass and say, ‘Please pay me.’ But the dark side of me fucking hates it. I need something to release that feeling. In my music I have freedom.”

And he returns shortly to a recurring theme: anger. “Let’s be honest when we do things,” he declares. “Today I’m angry about this, so I write about it; I don’t care if people like it or not. It satisfies me, and it satisfies the band. The most important thing is the freedom and the spirit. When you lose them, there’s no more art. Maybe our songs are not happy songs, but they’re honest. Many artists are afraid to be honest. When I listen to what is called Vietnamese rock, most of them make me think, ‘What is this about?’ There’s no spirit, no emotion. That does not give me a release.”

COCC - Live show at Le Cafe des Stagiaires , Jan 2025. Photo by KiCu KiCu.

It doesn’t occur to me to ask whether it’s fair to say that, in his case, anger functions as a sort of muse (I have this thought later, after we say goodbye), but I do inquire as to its origin. Where does the anger come from? Is it provoked by his observations, or has it always just been a part of him? Phúc considers this, and is slow to respond, eventually pointing to some of the lyrical content from “6 Giờ.” “On our first album, I sang about daily life, everyday things: traffic jams, conflicts with my family, seeing children on the street without parents. But I don’t have the solution. I just express my feeling about it.”

2024 live show at Soma. Photo by KiCu KiCu.

Intent on drawing him out a bit further, I remind him of a moment from a recent COCC show at Le Café des Stagiaires in District 2. At one point, about halfway through their set, Phúc addressed the audience in English. He regretted, he said, that the foreigners in the crowd were unable to understand what he was singing about. So he summed up the meaning of the next song, titled ‘Chất Ăn Mòn’ (“Corrosion”): “Life is full of traps and full of holes. There are many people who want to manipulate you. They want to pull you down into their dirt. They give you poison but they promote it as food. And it slowly destroys you. They want to make you an empty person. And one day there’s no more fight, no more motivation.”

From that metaphor we get a broader and deeper sense of where Phúc and COCC are coming from. Inherent in the music is an ethos of defiance, a fierce opposition to falling in line with a social order that has no use for individuality — that is in fact hostile to it and seeks to stamp it out. It’s a universal problem, and, for Phúc, resisting the pressure to capitulate is what the creative process is all about.

In my career as an architect, I have to make other people happy and satisfied. In that world I have to kiss the client’s ass and say, ‘Please pay me.’ But the dark side of me fucking hates it. I need something to release that feeling. In my music I have freedom.

“When someone does something different, when someone goes beyond the crowd and the lies, there’s some invisible force that manipulates the crowd to attack the person who wants to be different,” he says. “If you raise your voice, if you do something different — trói [you’re tied, bound, lassoed]. I want to tell people, ‘You have to do something your own way. Don’t belong to the fucking crowd. Don’t let them pull you down into their shit.’”

Since their debut in 2011, there have been ebbs and flows in COCC’s output. Periods of quiet led some fans to think that maybe they’d packed it in. Not at all. On the contrary, the band — who regard themselves as a family, and their music as a hobby — tell me they have been practicing together at least once a week for almost twenty years. That streak isn’t likely to be broken anytime soon.

The band hanging out together off the stage on New Year's Eve, 2024 Photo via COCC's Instagram page.

COCC are, in fact, busier than ever. They have concrete plans for the year ahead: releasing a new album, to be precise, in a physical format. It’s to be a concept album about a Vietnamese allegory involving a drought and a heroic toad that leads an army of animals to fight the gods. Here I suppose I ought to shed some light on the band’s name (pronounced c-o-c-c). It has, according to Phúc, a double source of inspiration. One is this fairy tale about the toad; the other is the expression con ông cháu cha — a reference to being born into privilege and power.

But it’s the allegoric toad that has inspired COCC’s current project, which is ambitious in scope.

“The album we are doing now is a concept album about the toad,” Phúc says. “We’re thinking about doing something like a rock opera. Like Tommy by the Who. So there’s a concept and there’s a story line, and we’re thinking about using more instruments, traditional instruments. The idea has been in my head for a long time, and now is the time to do it. We’re looking forward to completing the physical format. We have to do it.”

Recent show flyer featuring the all-important toad. Artwork by KiCu KiCu

Vinyl? CD? He’s not sure yet, but he’s hoping vinyl. As for upcoming gigs, Phúc tells me that they’ve had to turn some invitations down as they prioritize their work on the album.

“We like to bring a new thing to the audience,” he explains. “So the right procedure is to release something new in a physical format, and then we’ll do a tour from the south to the north. We haven’t thought about marketing yet. We have just told our fans, ‘We will do something in 2025.’”

I’m tempted to ask whether, in COCC’s interpretation of the tale, the toad lives happily ever after. But I can take a guess.