Past Solo Exhibition
Dinh Q. Lê: Monuments and Memorials 17.03.2018 — 12.05.2018
Information
Event has ended
17 March - 12 May 2018
About The Exhibition
“Photography is now so vital to memory, as a safeguard that the past will not be erased.. And ironically, we often rely, as with the Khmer Rouge, on the photographs taken by the murderers. – Allan de Souza
STPI Gallery presents the first major solo exhibition in Singapore by Dinh Q. Lê, one of Asia’s most established artists to date. For the very first time, the multiple award-winning artist has developed breakthrough print works of unprecedented scale and technical distinction from Splendor and Darkness —his sold-out photo-weaving series.
“Monuments and Memorials” marks the premiere of this pivotal series in Asia, also unveiling his first-ever three-dimensional weavings which feature the recent refugee exodus from Africa and the Middle East into Southern Europe.
In Splendor and Darkness , Lê shredded photographs of Cambodian temples and iconic portraits of Khmer Rouge victims killed at Tuol Sleng, weaving the strips into photomontages using the age-old craft of traditional Vietnamese grass mat weaving. The resulting transfigured image is a rich, multi-faceted viewpoint of history and a reflection of our fragmented personal and collective memory. Lê’s long-standing desire for mural-sized, monumental foiling works interwoven with matt paper were realised for the very first time through STPI’s technical capabilities, which refined the works with greater texture and warmth.
“All these possibilities that I always wanted for this series was never possible until I learnt what STPI could do… these new processes helped me to perfect the work.”
Haunting, iconic, and universal, “Monuments and Memorials” blazes new trails for Lê’s celebrated practice. Find out more about the artist here. Check out his available works here. To view the exhibition catalogue, please click here.
About the artist
Dinh Q. Lê
Residency in 2017
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).
Find Out More