42 Yết Kiêu

Xăng-tên | S(a/á)ng tên, 2023
63 x 71 x 2 inches | 160 x 180 x 5 cm
Acrylic, inkjet transfer, pastel, colored pencil on linen stretched on aluminum panel

Who Drew the Nation?, 2025
63 x 71 x 2 inches | 160 x 180 x 5 cm
Acrylic, screenprint, colored pencil, seashell powder on dibond panel

Informed by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s notion of paranoid and reparative reading, this double painting examines two opposing perceptions of the legacy of the École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine, now the Vietnam University of Fine Arts, on the occasion of its centennial (1925–2025). One celebrates its revered legacy for launching Vietnamese modernism; the other deconstructs its lingering dominance and the hierarchies embedded within Western art education introduced during the French Indochina era. Both scenes reference the same academic classroom model, yet differ in tone, surface treatment, and figuration.

The first painting, Xăng-tên | S(a/á)ng tên, takes its root from the French word centaine (hundred)—xăng-tên being its Vietnamese pronunciation, marking the school’s hundred-year anniversary. The title plays on the Vietnamese homonyms sang tên (to transfer ownership) and sáng tên (to illuminate or highlight names), where a shift in tone transforms meaning. The typographic slip (a/á) holds both senses at once, evoking inheritance, renaming, renewal, and illumination. Like the painting itself, the title performs a layered act of re-signing history. The composition teems with sketches and inscribed names of alumni, rendered within a classical Renaissance perspective reminiscent of a hall of fame.

In contrast, Who Drew the Nation? adopts a lacquered palette and rejects linear perspective as well as the traditional logic of light and shadow. Figures float and overlap, untethered from spatial hierarchy. Scattered throughout are fragments of works by the school’s most celebrated alumni—placed not to glorify those already canonized, but to question the architecture of art-historical memory itself: who and what get remembered, and who or what is left out? The floor’s seashell-powder texture and the luminous window recall Vietnamese folk paintings, subtly destabilizing hierarchies between “fine arts” and “craft,” between the privileged mediums of oil and lacquer versus other materials, and between Western modernism and local vernacular forms.

Together, the works create a dialogue to contemplate both the legacy and the future of Vietnamese art.

Referred Artists
Alumni and Professors of École des Beaux-Arts de l'Indochine
(1925-1954)

Victor Tardieu (1870-1937)

Joseph Inguimberty (1896-1971)

Nam Sơn (1890-1973)

Alix Aymé (1894-1989)

Bùi Xuân Phái (1920-1988)

Dương Bích Liên (1924-1988)

Huỳnh Văn Gấm (1922-1987)

Lê Thị Lựu (1911-1988)

Lê Quốc Lộc (1918-1987)

Lê Phổ (1907-2001)

LeMur Cát Tường (1912-1946)

Lê Văn Miến (1874-1943)

Mai Trung Thứ (1906-1980)

Nguyễn Đỗ Cung (1912-1977)

Nguyễn Gia Trí (1908-1993)

Nguyễn Đức Nùng (1914-1983)

Lương Xuân Nhị (1914-2006)

Nguyễn Tường Lân (1906-1946)

Nguyễn Sỹ Ngọc (1919-1990)

Nguyễn Tiến Chung (1914-1976)

Nguyễn Tư Nghiêm (1918-2016)

Nguyễn Sáng (1923-1988)

Nguyễn Phan Chánh (1892-1984)

Phạm Hậu (1903-1994)

Tạ Tỵ (1922-2004)

Trần Văn Cẩn (1910-1994)

Thang Trần Phềnh (1895-1972)

Vũ Cao Đàm (1908-2000)

Tô Ngọc Vân (1906-1954)

Trần Đình Thọ (1919-2011)

Alumni of Tô Ngọc Vân's Resistance Class
(1946-1957)

Trần Đông Lương (1925-1993)

Phạm Công Thành (1932-2022)

Trịnh Bá Phòng (1922-2024)

Đỗ Hữu Huề (1935-2022)

Trần Lưu Hậu (1928-2020)

Ngô Minh Cầu (1927-2009)

Lưu Công Nhân (1929-2007)

Nguyễn Thụ (1930-2023)

Vũ Quốc Ái / Lê Lam (1931-2022)

Lê Huy Hòa (1932-1997)

Alumni of Hanoi College of Fine Arts
(1957-1981)

Ca Lê Thắng (1949-)

Trần Khánh Chương (1943-2020)

Lê Anh Vân (1952-)

Nguyễn Văn Chung (1936-)

Nguyễn Nghĩa Duyện (1943-)

Vũ Giáng Hương (1930-2011)

Phan Cẩm Thượng (1957-)

Lê Thị Kim Bạch (1938-)

Lê Thanh Trừ (1935-2019)

Đoàn Văn Nguyên (1947-)

Hoàng Trầm (1928-2025)

Nguyễn Thị Mộng Bích (1931-)

Nguyễn Thanh Bình (1954-)

Đặng Xuân Hòa (1959-)

Phạm Ngọc Sỹ (1944-2012)

Alumni of Vietnam University of Fine Arts
(1981-present)

Trương Tân (1963-)

Nguyễn Thế Sơn (1978-)

Trần Hậu Yên Thế (1970-)

Triệu Khắc Tiến (1977-)

Trần Hoàng Sơn (1972-)

Hà Mạnh Thắng (1980-)

Mai Duy Minh (1976-)

Phạm Bình Chương (1973-)

Đinh Ý Nhi (1969-)

Đỗ Minh Tâm (1963-)

Bùi Hữu Hùng (1957-)

Hồng Việt Dũng (1962-)

Trần Lương (1960-)

Trần Trọng Vũ (1964-)

50 – MFA Thesis Project

Folk Painting: The Remake