U.S. Embassy Sponsors Vietnamese-American Artist’s Exhibition

July 18, 2007

The Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts will host BLACK BOX, a groundbreaking art exhibition by PhiPhi Oanh Nguyen that delves into a rapidly-changing modern Vietnam through the time-honored traditional medium of lacquer.  U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Michael W. Marine will open the show that will run from July 19 – 31.  This exhibition is sponsored by the Embassy of the United States of America in Hanoi.

Black Box will feature 16 life-sized rectangular lacquer containers with lids depicting images that reflect common or shared experiences in present-day Vietnam. In this work, PhiPhi examines quotidian material objects such as motorbikes, utility towers, and construction cranes using a medium often reserved for lofty symbols and iconic images. Her scenes, simultaneously idyllic and commonplace, push the medium of lacquer beyond its current expressive dimensions.

As she explaines, "Even though I have chosen to stay close to its roots by painting utilitarian and common object in 'figurative' terms, I have tried to surpass the medium and the resulting object d'art into greater heights of freedom and expressiveness. In short, I wanted it to breathe more and flourish free from its traditional boundaries." 

Her paintings are images that occur in the exact same climate as their materials. Equally dynamic and unpredictable, the form and content of the pieces dance in a symbiotic metaphor in which nature and society concurrently embrace and destroy each other in a relentless process.

The result is a marriage of environment and art, form and content. A work physically formed by and conceptually reflecting Hanoi. The pieces essentially constitute 'freeze-frame' memories embedded in a network of layers blurring past and present.

PhiPhi Oanh Nguyen was born in Houston to Vietnamese parents and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design. In 2005, she received a Fulbright scholarship to research the medium of Vietnamese lacquer. She has since been living and working in lacquer in Hanoi.