11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

NOTES 1 ‘The Silence is Deafening’, Vin Gallery, Hồ Chí Minh City, 2020; see <vingallery.com/ The-Silence-is-Deafening>, viewed March 2024. See also Amelia Gentleman, Guardian , 8 October 2020, <theguardian. com/uk-news/2020/oct/07/essex- lorry-deaths-39-vietnamese- migrants-suffocated-in- container-court-hears>, viewed March 2024. 2 Lê Thuý, email to the author, 13 November 2023. 3 Translation by Lê Thuý, email to the author, 13 November 2023. Lê Thuý grew up in Thanh Hóa province in north Việt Nam, and her early practice explored landscapes and rural imagery. Her delicately painted silk watercolours contemplated folk narratives and the symbolism of plants, and often featured animals and human skeletons tangled in weeds and flowers. With knowledge of botanic symbolism and aesthetic traditions, which bestow value on particular species that are believed to embody human qualities, she embedded subversive elements into her compositions, enabling her to comment on political hypocrisy and corruption, while evading censorship. Gradually her practice broadened, drawing inspiration from philosophical texts, poetry and Western classics, like Rachel Carson’s landmark environmental book Silent Spring (1962), as well as local Đạo Mẫu (mother goddess) religious practices, which have informed the artist’s views on ecology, politics and society. Lê Thuý’s installation for the Asia Pacific Triennial, Echo 2023, is comprised of several components — silk paintings, and lacquered doors and bricks — that together evoke a ruined house. The work continues her exploration of the search for a homeland that began with the 2020 exhibition ‘The Silence is Deafening’, in which 39 lacquered đàn bầu (gourd zither instruments), with their strings removed, expressed a deep empathy and mourning for the 39 Vietnamese refugees killed in a shocking incident in Essex earlier that year. 1 Leaving behind her busy life in Hồ Chí Minh City in 2020, Lê Thuý moved to Hội An, on Việt Nam’s central coast. Echo draws on the architectural history of the ancient but uniquely preserved trading port city, which embodies the cross-cultural influences of Việt Nam, China, Japan and France. Conscious of the threat to Hội An’s heritage posed by rapid development, Lê Thuý salvaged a group of nine doors discarded from a dismantled traditional house. Working on these doors for more than a year in her studio, she applied lacquer and gold leaf to reference motifs from botany, history, memento mori and pan-Asian religions. On one side of the doors, she painted images of war, death and disaster, while the reverse sides feature depictions of landscapes, hopes and dreams, thus balancing ideas of creation and destruction, freedom and imprisonment, opening and closure. Explaining her symbolism, Lê Thuý comments: In each door panel, different types of trees hold various meanings. Some are medicinal plants used to heal, while others are poisonous and can take lives. Some trees symbolise prosperity and beauty, like the peony flower. The bamboo represents a high moral character. The trees sprout, grow, flourish and wither with the seasons, much like the human experience. Trees can be intertwined with human life from birth to death. 2 At the centre of the nine assembled panels, Lê Thuý painted a single shadowy figure with multiple arms to represent Guanyin, the Buddhist goddess of mercy and the mother goddess of Đạo Mẫu spiritual beliefs, which are deeply rooted in Vietnamese culture. Accompanying the doors is a group of veil-like silk paintings. Suspended from the ceiling, their ghostly presence complements the painted doors by capturing the interiors of abandoned houses. The delicate images evoke memorabilia, family shrines and architectural embellishments, and suggest the lives of former occupants through lucent objects expressive of personal values and aspirations. A small group of fragmented bricks, with lacquer and gold leaf applied, balance the ethereality of the silk and give concrete form to the screen of bricks depicted in the paintings. Each silk painting is embedded with ink and embroidered with silk thread, which reproduces the original calligraphy of a poem by scholar Nguyễn Tường Phổ (1807–56) on returning to his birthplace of Hội An after a prolonged absence: 3 In a row, tiled houses this hamlet Prosperous landscape linger still On the riverbank, life is in bloom On the peach blossom path, is stillness. Like Nguyễn Tường Phổ’s poem, Lê Thuý’s works are highly emotive, drawing on her responses to the world as embodied by place and home, and seeking to balance growth with stillness. ABIGAIL BERNAL BORN 1988, THANHHÓA, VIỆTNAM LIVES+WORKS INHỘI AN, VIỆTNAM LÊ THUÝ Echo (details) 2023 / Doors: Lacquer, gold and silver leaf, mineral pigment on wood; Silk paintings: Ink, calligraphy, synthetic polymer paint and embroidery on silk; Brick fragments: Concrete and lacquer / Nine doors; seven silk paintings; six brick fragments / Installed dimensions variable / Purchased 2024 with funds from Tim Fairfax AC through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation ARTISTS+PROJECTS ASIAPACIFICTRIENNIAL 136 — 137