Lê Hiền Minh

Lê Hiền Minh (born 1979) is a Vietnamese artist known for employing a Vietnamese traditional handmade paper called Dó to construct large-scale installations. Her work acts as a bridge between contemporary and traditional Vietnamese art and also between modern and historical Vietnamese culture.[1][2] She currently lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City.

Lê Hiền Minh
Lê Hiền Minh lectures at Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan 2019
Born1979
Hanoi, North Vietnam
NationalityVietnamese
Known forInstallation art

She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Vietnam and abroad, including Vietnam National Museum of Fine Arts[3][4] in Hanoi, Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh Museum of Fine Arts[5][6] in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum[7] in Fukuoka, Japan, Incheon Women Artist Biennale[8][9] in Incheon, South Korea, Spinnerei[10] in Leipzig, Germany, Sculpture Expanded by the Association of Finnish Sculptors[11][12] in Helsinki, Finland, Wedeman Gallery in Massachusetts, USA.[13] She has also lectured at multiple public institutions, including San Jose Museum of Art[14] in San Jose, USA and Fukuoka Asian Art Museum[15] in Fukuoka, Japan.

Early life and education

Lê Hiền Minh was born in Hanoi, North Vietnam in 1979. In 1998, she studied traditional lacquer at Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts. Upon graduating, she moved to America to attend the Art Academy of Cincinnati and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2004.[16][17]

Art

Lê Hiền Minh has been using Vietnamese traditional handmade paper called Dó as her primary art-making material for two decades.[18][19] Dó paper is made from the bark of the Dó tree and is used to make woodcut folk prints called Đông Hồ. This type of folk print has existed since the 11th century during the reign of the Lý Dynasty. She uses this paper to create large-scale sculptural installations,[20] a departure from the traditional use of Dó paper in Vietnamese art.[21] Minh describes her intention "As the Dó paper tradition becomes a relic, I am exploring ways to reinvent it as a contemporary art making material. It is my hope that the use of Dó paper in my artwork will contribute to cultural sustainability."[22] In a speech at the Factory Contemporary Arts Center, she divided her career into two periods: in the early period, her work drew from her inner life and focused on her personal history, while in recent years, the subjects of her work address broader aspects of society and culture including topics related to politics, religion and history.[17]

Dictionaries (2012)

This installation was first exhibited at Vietnam National Museum of Fine Arts.[23] Dictionaries consists of 1000 sculptural objects in the form of a dictionary, a commemorative work created specifically for 10 year anniversary of Minh's father's death.[24] Together with the installation, Minh created an artist book, Còn Lại|Rời Rạc, as a companion piece to the installation.[25] "18 loose cards housed in a blue box, each featuring a photograph of objects that belonged to the artist's father with handwritten memories on the reverse. Includes an artist statement printed on brown paper and one loose photograph."[26] "The exhibition is attracting many visitors. Among them, visitor Vu Thuy Trang said “Thanks to Roi Rac, memories about the past and childhood of the person in the artist’s generation become fulfilled through the experiences of others".[25] The installation was later shown in Ho Chi Minh Museum of Fine Arts.[27]

Balls (2004, revisited 2016)

"Female identity and labour, and gender inequality issues – these concepts have grounded, interwoven, and driven the artistic practice of Lê Hiền Minh since the beginning of her career."[28] The installation Balls consists of a black lacquer altar table that Vietnamese use to put an incense holder to house the souls of the ancestors, a large glass jar used to infuse Rược thuốc that Vietnamese men believed to be good for their sexual health, overfilled with more than 20 thousand hand-sculpted paper balls onto the floor.[17][29][30] "Accompanied by a Confucianist phrase that translates to something like: 'A woman’s greatest duty is to produce a son,' the burgeoning balls exert a persistent pressure of male power."[29][31] Minh uses these cultural historical objects and text to ask “What does it mean to be female? What does it mean to be a ‘modern woman’ in Vietnamese society?”[31] are contemporarily relevant. The work criticizes traditional gender roles as they relate to power structures and social hierarchies in Vietnam's culture "in which certain traditional values may serve one gender at the expense of the other".[30] "This sweeping and provocative inscription in Balls received a variety of responses from viewers" also marked that "text plays an essential role in Lê Hiền Minh's works".[32]

Five Questions (2019—)

Five Questions is an ongoing series of interactive works that pair sculpture and text. In it, Minh asks a set of five simple questions about women: Who is woman? What is woman? Where is woman? When is woman? Why is woman?[28][17] "Writing - in the form of questions - is a way for Hiền Minh to avoid manipulating the viewer’s reading, understanding and perception of the work. Instead of forcing ideas, questions help to expand the thought process."[32] People are invited to interact with the work by writing their answers to these questions and placing them within or upon the sculpture. "In order to ‘extend’ sculpture (from a fixed, finished mass, to a more continuous process), writing - especially in the form of questions - helps to create a power- neutral space. There, Hiền Minh hands the power (to create) to the audience. As long as the questions continue to provoke them, and they continue to interact by providing answers, the work will change shape and live on."[32] The first in the series was The States of Mind (2019) which contains five large female statues in five different poses, and was installed at a historical site and a Buddhist temple named Myorakuji[7][29][33] in Fukuoka, Japan. The second in the series was The Invisibility of Female Labour (2020), and was shown at the Spinnerei in Leipzig, Germany in which she focused on the subject of female labour and the inequality system between male and female workers.[34] The third and most recent in this series is The Gods of Expectation: Divine Cycle, Devine Constant, Devine Source no.1 (2021).[35] With this installation, Minh used "magnificent figures of goddesses from multiple indigenous beliefs" such as Đạo Mẫu, a folk religion believed to have originated from matriarchy of ancient Vietnam, to amalgamate with home appliances are "provoking, while also acknowledging, the strength of women in their seeming invisibility" and "challenges our collective understanding of monumentality and femininity, whilst persistently criticizing the social/gender hierarchy deeply embedded in all aspects of life – both traditional and contemporary – in Vietnam".[36]

Artist book

Lê Hiền Minh created an artist book Còn Lại|Rời Rạc in 2012 as a companion piece to the installation Dictionaries. It was acquired by the Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection which is one of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's special collections for public viewing in the "study room on the fifth floor of the School's Sharp Building".[26][37] The book was also collected by Asia Art Archive to "preserve and make information on contemporary art from and of Asia easily accessible in order to facilitate understanding, research and writing in the field."[38][39]

The Asia Art Archive describes the book:

This object is intended to serve as companion to the installation to further explore memory and its limits. During the process of making Còn Lại| Rời Rạc, the artist rewrote each recollection many times. She arranged, measured and lined them up carefully, like a map. This map operates like a maze, with old things as well as unknown new things living together.[38]

Recent awards and residencies
  • Finnish Cultural Foundation Grant (2018)[40]
  • Asian Cultural Council Grant (2019)[41]
  • Fukuoka Asian Art Museum Residency (2019) Minh is one of six Vietnamese artists invited to participate in the 20-year-old residency program of Fukuoka Asian Art Museum,[42](which describes itself as "the only museum in the world that systematically collects and exhibits Asian modern and contemporary art"[43]).
  • Pazifik - Leipzig Residency (2020) Minh is the first Vietnamese artist to win the Pazifik - Leipzig program in which the Goethe-Institut funds for artists from Southeast Asia a three-month residency at the Art and Culture Centre Spinnerei.[44]
  • Asian Cultural Council Grant (2022) Minh is one of the three artists in 2022 awarded the Graduate Scholarship from Asian Cultural Council to pursue graduate level education.[45]

Partial list of exhibitions

Solo

Group exhibitions

References
  1. "Lê Hiền Minh", The Factory Contemporary Arts Center. Retrieved on 14 June 2021.
  2. "Le Hien Minh", Goethe-Institut Vietnam. Retrieved on 14 June 2021.
  3. "Tôi phải tìm cho mình con đường riêng biệt", Bao Tin Tuc, 11 November 2012. Retrieved on 14 June 2021.
  4. "Lê Hiền Minh và sự trỗi dậy của ký ức", The Thao Van Hoa, 13 November 2012. Retrieved on 14 June 2021.
  5. "Lê Hiền Minh - 10 năm với giấy dó", Tuoi Tre, 23 July 2013. Retrieved on 14 June 2021.
  6. "Le Hien Minh’s Do10 showcases her career", Vietnam Net, 19 July 2013. Retrieved on 14 June 2021.
  7. Fukuoka Asian Art Museum. Retrieved on 14 June 2021.
  8. "Spotlight on Women Artists at Incheon Biennale", The Korea Times. Retrieved on 14 June 2021.
  9. "2009 Incheon Women Artists Biennale", Asian Art Archive. Retrieved on 14 June 2021.
  10. Goethe-Institut Vietnam. Retrieved on 14 June 2021.
  11. "Sculpture Expanded", Aalto University. Retrieved on 14 June 2021.
  12. "Sculpture Expanded muuttaa kaupunkikuvaa kesällä 2019", Helsinki. Retrieved on 14 June 2021.
  13. "Kệ: History Of Now", Wedeman Gallery. Retrieved on 17 June 2021.
  14. "Lê Hiền Minh: Living in a material world", San Jose Museum of Art. Retrieved on 26 April 2021.
  15. "Lê Hiền Minh: Material World", Fukuoka Asian Art Museum. Retrieved on 26 April 2021.
  16. "Sculpture Expanded Artists", Sculpture Expanded. Retrieved on 17 June 2021.
  17. "Lê Hiền Minh: Thách thức cách hiểu tập thể về nữ tính", Hanoi Grapevine. Retrieved on 29 June 2021.
  18. "Một cuộc đối thoại của điêu khắc đương đại", Tuoi Tre, 19 March 2021. Retrieved on 29 April 2021.
  19. "Nghệ Thuật Cho Nhau Thêm Sức Mạnh", Elle, 19 September 2021. Retrieved on 05 January 2022.
  20. "Nghệ thuật thời Covid-19: Sáng tạo và thích ứng", Sai Gon Giai Phong, 16 March 2021. Retrieved on 29 April 2021.
  21. "Exhibition Dó10", Hanoi Grapevine, 16 July 2013. Retrieved on 17 June 2021.
  22. "Le Hien Minh Statement"(PDF). Retrieved on 29 April 2021.
  23. "Cuộc trở về của ký ức", Van Nghe Cong An, 05 November 2012. Retrieved on 05 May 2021.
  24. "Lê Hiền Minh và triển lãm đặc biệt về cha", Tap Chi Song Huong, 02 November 2012. Retrieved on 05 May 2021.
  25. "Bo Hao", Dangcongsan, 15 November 2012. Retrieved on 24 June 2021.
  26. School of the Art Institute of Chicago Digital Collections. Retrieved on 29 April 2021.
  27. "Dó 10 - Sắp đặt nghệ thuật từ giấy dó", Tap Chi Van Nghe, 16 July 2013. Retrieved on 29 April 2021.
  28. "An Artist Talk with Le Hien Minh", The Factory Contemporary Arts Center. Retrieved on 17 June 2021.
  29. "New Currents: Le Hien Minh", Art Asia Pacific, 25 April 2022. Retrieved on 25 May 2022.
  30. Hat|Tim, ArtAsiaPacific. Retrieved on 29 April 2021.
  31. "Women Trailblazers in Vietnam", Cobosocial. Retrieved on 17 June 2021.
  32. "Memory Notebook"(PDF), Bill Nguyen. Retrieved on 29 April 2021.
  33. Art in Hakata Old Town(PDF), Retrieved on 22 April 2021.
  34. "Report from Le Hien Minh", Goethe-Institut Vietnam. Retrieved on 15 June 2021.
  35. "Within / Between / Beneath / Upon", Aura Asia Art Project. Retrieved on 14 June 2021.
  36. "Within\ Between\ Beneath\ Upon", The Factory Contemporary Arts Center. Retrieved on 29 April 2021.
  37. About The Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection, SAIC Digital Collections. Retrieved on 18 June 2021.
  38. Asia Art Archive in America. Retrieved on 26 April 2021.
  39. Overview, Asian Art Archive in America. Retrieved on 18 June 2021.
  40. "Sculpture Expanded- About". The Association of Finnish Sculptors. Retrieved on 15 July 2021.
  41. "San Jose Museum of Art". Retrieved on 23 April 2021.
  42. "Residence Program". Fukuoka Asian Art Museum. Retrieved on 15 July 2021.
  43. Mission, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum. Retrieved on 25 June 2021.
  44. "Report from Le Hien Minh". Goethe-Institute. Retrieved on 15 July 2021.
  45. "Le Hien Minh | Visual Art | Graduate Scholarship". Retrieved on 13 April 2023.
  46. "Thế giới giấy dó trong tác phẩm Lê Hiền Minh", Tia Sang, 17 May 2007. Retrieved on 22 April 2021.
  47. "Bố Hạo - triển lãm sắp đặt lạ về người cha”, Nhan Dan, 05 November 2012. Retrieved on 22 April 2021.
  48. "Lê Hiền Minh: 10 năm với giấy dó", Doanh Nhan Sai Gon, 27 July 2013. Retrieved on 22 April 2021.
  49. "2009 Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale", The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved on 23 April 2021.
  50. "Hành trình môi son", Tuoi Tre, 30 March 2012. Retrieved on 23 April 2021.
  51. "Sắp triển lãm tranh Người (Được) Ngắm", Van Hien Viet Nam, 04 December 2018. Retrieved on 05 May 2021.
  52. "Divine Feminine", Sculpture Expanded, Retrieved on 26 April 2021.
  53. "Objekti 6", Retrieved on 26 April 2021.
  54. "Pathways into Sculpture in Vietnam", Ocula, 07 April 2021. Retrieved on 23 April 2021.
  55. "Making & Experiencing Asian Cultures", Fukuoka Asian Art Museum. Retrieved on 29 June 2021.
  56. "Pacific Leipzig", Deutsches Haus Ho Chi Minh City. Retrieved on 21 April 2023.
  57. "Tongue & Nail", ArtForum, Retrieved on 21 April 2023.
  58. "Tongue tied", Chicago Reader, April 18 2023.
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