Dinh Q. Lê

Dinh Q. Lê (1968–2024, Hà Tiên, Vietnam, based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) worked with photography, film and installation to examine the fragmented nature of history, memory and identity. Concerned with how the extensive military conflict in 1960s and 1970s Vietnam—locally known as the American War—had thoroughly impacted the nation’s collective consciousness, Lê merged personal realities, lesser-known narratives and depictions in popular media from both Eastern and Western sources to create works that question censorship, exploitation and propaganda. Lê is considered one of the most critically acclaimed contemporary artists to have emerged from Vietnam.

Following the warfare in 1975 and the 1978 Khmer Rouge regime that upended the lives of Lê and his family, they moved to a Thai refugee camp and eventually relocated to Los Angeles, USA. These experiences informed the artist’s critical perspective towards dominant representations of his homeland. In his renowned From Vietnam to Hollywood (2002–2005) series, Lê employed a photo-weaving technique that referenced the method used by his aunt to make traditional grass mats. Documentary images of wartorn Vietnam, stills from mainstream American films about the war, and other Hollywood symbols were spliced, interlaced and layered to create billboard-scale collages of ghostly portraits and abstract landscapes. Existing in the uneasy space between fact and fiction, this approach served as a strategy to disturb mainstream narratives.

Lê received his BA in Art Studio at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1989 and his MFA in Photography and Related Media at The School of Visual Arts, New York in 1992. His work is found in major collections including Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Portland Art Museum; Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Tate Collection, London.

Notable solo exhibitions include Fragile Springs (2023), University of New Hampshire Museum of Art, Durham; Photographing the thread of memory (2022), musée du quai Branly, Paris; True Journey is Return (2018), San Jose Museum of Art; The Colony (2017), Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Memory for Tomorrow (2016), Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art; and The Colony (2016), Ikon Gallery, Birmingham. The artist has also participated in major international festivals including We Do Not Dream Alone (2021), 1st Asia Society Triennial, New York; Escape Routes (2020), 2nd Bangkok Art Biennale; Imagined Borders (2018), 12th Gwangju Biennale 2018; Beyond the Crisis (2011), 6th Curitiba Biennial, Rio De Janeiro; Living in Evolution (2010), 6th Busan Biennale; Live and Let Live (2009), 4th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale; Wonder (2008), 2nd Singapore Biennale 2008; Fever Variations (2006), 6th Gwangju Biennale; APT5 (2006), 5th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane; and Dreams and Conflicts (2003), 50th Venice Biennale.

Lê had his residency at the STPI Workshop in 2017, resulting in the exhibition Monuments and Memorials (2018).