Two of Vietnam’s most promising artists Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng and Lê Giang have been invited by Manzi Art Space to show their latest artwork in the joint exhibition ‘Above Under Sky’.
Both Phượng and Giang work across a wide range of media and have exhibited their art at various art galleries and in shows across the world. Though conceptually different, both of the artists’ work shown at Manzi from 2 – 15 March 2014 deal with brooding emotions, possible and impossible escapes and life’s many layers.
For & Of Other Things Phượng and Giang took a break from setting up their installations and sat down to converse about making art, their taste and exhibiting together.
Left: Lê Giang, Right: Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng
Interview by Fabiola Büchele ● Edited by Rose Arnold ● Photos by Thủy Tiên Nguyễn
MEETING AND COLLABORATING
Lê Giang: So the first time we met hmm..
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: Actually, we didn’t know each other when Tram [Manzi curator Tram Vu] and Bill [Manzi curator Bill Nguyen] put us together for the project in Manzi. A friend of mine and I applied and then [Tram] said ‘oh we have another female artist in Hanoi and her theme is similar to yours’, so I read your statement, then I thought ‘that’s interesting’ and then we met on Skype. That’s the first time we talked together.
Lê Giang: Yeah, it was a very surprising thing for me, because suddenly Tram and Bill from Manzi contacted me saying would you like to exhibit with Phượng and I barely knew you before, but it was really amazing, how our statements work very well together. So I guess ‘ok let’s give it a try’ and the first time we met I went to Saigon for some event of Sàn Art and we went to eat some snail (laughs).
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: Yes, it’s like a typical thing in Saigon, you must eat it.
Lê Giang: Saigon snail! And then you came to Hanoi and we met a second time, and we talked a lot via the phone and Skype before.
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: Before we met you already gave me your website and I looked at it and [thought] ‘oh, who is she (LG laughs) I read the bio at first. ‘She was born in the UK…
Lê Giang: …I was born in Vietnam.
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: … ah sorry. You did your MA in the UK and just got back. I wanted to meet you because it is really difficult if you barely know someone and you just jump to work together.
Lê Giang: But sometimes you know maybe you get really along well with somebody and you think that ok this is my best friend, we should….
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng:… somehow work together.
Lê Giang: … but it doesn’t work that way, because you think it would be good, but the curator may think ‘mmm not really, they don’t really fit with each other’ so having an outside person to look at our works and say you work well together, I believed that.
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: We kept each other informed. Like I am waiting for this and this to finish and you ask me how are things going and I ask what about you, so we know the timing so we can manage it [putting the show together].
Lê Giang: And I think we help each other in terms of technical things, because of course the director of Manzi do not know much about the technical side so that’s where we meet and help each other to make things.
Lê Giang
MATERIAL & A SENSE OF BEAUTY
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: Usually my favourite material should be clear, sensual and delicate and when I saw your artwork I was like ‘oh, she is awesome, we have like mutual material, she works with plastic, and watercolour on paper’. And I have silk and glass and watercolour as well.
Lê Giang: For this exhibition it is not really similar material, for this one we have completely opposite materials and colours and almost everything is very opposite. But usually I am also interested in transparent material and yeah, I have to say, Tram and Bill did a really great job, to think of us and how we can connect with each other. So for this one, my works will be in black and your works will be in white and transparent.
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: I always try to create a beautiful thing. That’s the first thing. Whatever you have done, it must look beautiful as well. So I just create, at least for me it should be lovely and beautiful,
Lê Giang: … I think, how do you say? We have the same sense of beauty…
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: …yeah. I like obviously a lot of kinds of work and a lot of ways of doing things, but for me it should look beautiful. Clean.
Lê Giang: …yeah and what defines beauty is always very difficult. I don’t know what you like.
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: I like the fragile things. And protected, delicate, clean, shiny.
Lê Giang: Ok, I don’t really like the shiny things.
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: Not shiny like…
Lê Giang: …like gold or silver.
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: Well I do like silver.
Lê Giang: I like things which are not too appealing, where you have to make an effort to figure it out and to recognise its beauty. I don’t like something ok, too …, ah I think things must be very natural, to be attractive not try too much to be… I also like simple and pale colour.
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: I can see that.
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng
INSPIRATION, THEMES & ABOVE UNDER SKY
Lê Giang: The thing that I have always been interested in is a utopia where there is no trace of human [kind] so I really want to create a sense of holes and doors that connect you to another other world. And I was inspired by George Orwell’s book [1984] and its memory hole, so that is my inspiration to create this series.
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: My work was also from George Orwell as well (LG laughs), but the first time we talked we were like ‘wow, it is just coincidence that we got inspiration from George Orwell.’ And I am really interested in the dystopia from 1984 and my work is more about not opening the door. You are the lock and feel lost. You want to come out, but you are locked [in] by your own power.
Lê Giang: Yeah, we have different aspects of the same inspiration. I think for me if I look at your work, the people in your work really want to break through everything, but something keeps them to the ground…. is that correct?
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: Yeah, so it’s like the door is there, but they cannot move, they cannot get out of themselves. The transparency is like the sense of them, but they still stick to the reality. And this was the idea the first time we talked about the show right? We said that our art will be a part of each other. It’s not exactly the same, but it will be a part of it, so that it is still an opposite idea, but it still connects together.
Lê Giang:Also I have never thought that being a woman will affect your theme of work, but I guess it still does in some way. Because I think there must a kind of similar reason for us to try to get out of this world, right? There must be. For me, I think there is some issue to want to escape from this world, that’s why I think only when we are really tired of and afraid of this world then we try to find some utopia.
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: So you are more about creating a utopia and my work is about trying to escape the dystopia.
Lê Giang: So you think this is a dystopia?
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: I think it is a dys-utopia. It’s like a frenemy. It’s opposite, but connected together.
BECOMING AND BEING AN ARTIST
Lê Giang: It’s very difficult to earn a living as an artist in Vietnam, especially when you are not doing some painting or sculpture that can stand on its own. So for me my solution is, I opened an art centre to teach art to kids and amateur adults and I still have my drawings in an art space so hopefully I sell something.
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: I have to work to keep being an artist, to keep making my work, to keep painting, so I work as a freelance illustrator for TV commercials with a reasonable income, enough to keep going.
PAUSE
Lê Giang: …when did I decide to be an artist?
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: Actually that is not it, you don’t decide to be an artist. I just roll with the flow. It’s just like when I said ‘I don’t think I can do this anymore, I will stop’. But then ‘hey I have a new project, do you want to join us?’ and I am always like ‘ahhhh, yeah. I will’. It’s just like that. Sometimes it’s really frustrating.
Lê Giang: Yes it is (laughs). I have never thought of anything else I could do rather than….
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: …art.
Lê Giang: …being an artist. I started drawing when, I think I was 13 years old, and I just keep doing it, keep doing it and then I got into fine art college. The question everyone always gives an artist is ‘why did you chose to be an artist’, really you don’t have any choice, because you just are.
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: You have no reason, it’s just like, when I was young and I just painted all the time, then my mum said ‘I think you should do this, you are not good at math and you should’… are you good at math?
Lê Giang: Good question. (laughs) Not really.
Lê Hoàng Bích Phượng: But I can count. But it is the same with most artists everywhere I mean I don’t know about overseas, but at least all my friends accept that we all have the same problem when we go hang out and we have to calculate the bill, and ‘ahhh it’s ahh, ok you look, how can we… oh just use a calculator.’
Lê Giang: I think for me what drives me to great things is: I need something to express myself, I don’t think we really need to care about what people need. Just about us. I think art is a way for you to give away and to expose your energy outside and not to explode and….yeah. That’s the need to create.
