Le Thuy Projects | Open Studio “Hallowed Land”: Land, Memory, and the Dialogue Between Lacquer and Silk
Opening: 06 Aug 2026 (invitation only)
Exhibition: 10 AM – 05 PM, 07 Aug – 30 Sep 2026
Lê Thúy Projects
285 Nguyễn Duy Hiệu, Hội An
From the organizer:
The open studio “Hallowed Lands” invites the public into the artist’s working space, offering direct access to her research, material practice, and creative process. Alongside finished works, visitors will encounter experiments, studies, and works-in-progress made with materials the artist has lived alongside for years.
“Hallowed Lands” grows out of years spent observing places shaped by history, conflict, and forgetting. From this, the artist raises a question: when people are severed from the land they once belonged to, and that land becomes a border, a resource, or a battlefield, what remains?
Lacquer is the central material language of Le Thuy’s practice. Unlike conventional surface techniques, its power lies in its capacity to conceal and retain. Through each stage of the process, colors, gold, and silver sink and resurface, revealing traces once buried beneath. Alongside lacquer sits silk, a material the artist has worked with since the earliest years of her career. Softer and more fragile, silk carries its own layer of memory, holding what people have entrusted to the land. In this project, the materials do not merely illustrate an idea; they become, in themselves, vessels for holding time, memory, and transformation.
The open studio is housed in a heritage building in Hoi An, not far from a place that once carried the name “Hallowed Lands” itself, a site that moved through its own arc from sacred ground, to destruction and abandonment, to heritage status. The choice of venue draws a connection between the project’s central idea and the history of central Vietnam.
Reflecting on her process, artist Le Thuy said:
“I’m drawn to the tension between stillness and upheaval – a landscape that looks calm on the surface, but underneath, an entire world is shifting. ‘Hallowed Lands’ is my attempt to stand inside those questions, quietly bearing witness to them. And somewhere in the depth of those wounds, to find something that is still breathing.”
About Le Thuy Projects
Le Thuy Projects is a contemporary art space in Hoi An, built on the belief that art with lasting value is grown through knowledge, craft, and sustained engagement with material. The project’s core activities span exhibitions, artist residencies, workshops, and research, contributing to a deeper contemporary art ecosystem in central Vietnam.
