Talk “The Way Out Is In”
03 PM – 04:30 PM, Sat 19 Sep 2026
Rare Sea
3 Đặng Thị Nhu, Bến Thành, HCMC
Registration link (Limited to 30 participants)
Parking: TNXP parking lot – 4 Trương Định, Bến Thành Ward (900 m; 2 minutes by walking)
From the organizer:
The history of Vietnamese silk painting can be seen as a continuous process of embracing, transforming, and restructuring external influences. However, after the stability of the well-established language “Vietnamese silk painting”, this medium encountered difficulty in generating a new language that could correspond to the changes of contemporary society and art. Join Dr. Nguyễn Minh Quang and artist Lê Nguyễn Minh Như to explore the ruptures and adaptations of contemporary silk painting in the talk “The Way Out Is In”.
A medium once so flexible in its adaptations, why did it come to a standstill precisely its most needed moment of departure? Following this question, the talk will walk participants through three constitutive elements of silk painting: subject matter/content, visual language, and the material and technique that make up the painting. Together, the speakers and the participants will trace back historical periods in the development of Vietnamese silk painting: from the practice on silk before and after the emergence of L’École des beaux-arts de l’Indochine (the Indochina College of Fine Arts), to the post-war period, when the country entered socialist construction, and the current state of silk painting after the Renovation period. The talk aims to invite more questions and discussion on the transformation of a traditional material in the context of contemporary art.
About the artists
Nguyễn Minh Quang (Andy Nguyen) is an artist whose painting practice dates back to the 1990s, with a distinctive presence in Vietnamese art. He graduated with an MA from the Vietnam University of Fine Arts in 1999 and completed his PhD in Fine Arts at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts in 2016.
In 2000, Nguyễn Minh Quang was awarded the Bronze Medal at the National Fine Arts Exhibition for his silk painting Landscape. In 2004, he received the ASEAN Fine Arts Award. Alongside practicing and researching, Nguyễn Minh Quang has been working to connect art organizations, foundations, universities, museums in Vietnam with other institutions across Asia, which include the University Art Museum at Tokyo University of the Arts, Xiamen Art Museum, the Academy of Arts & Design at Tsinghua University, and the Academy of Fine Arts at Minjiang University, among others. He is currently a lecturer at Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts and serves as Deputy Director of Professional Affairs at the Asian Lacquer Art Research Institute (ALARI), Thailand.
Lê Nguyễn Minh Như (b. 1996) is among the few young artists in Vietnam who approaches Vietnamese silk painting through mineral pigments, rethinking a medium that has been closely tied to the aesthetics of transparent watercolors over the past century. Minh Như’s works leave a lasting impression through mineral pigments resting on the silk surface like layers of sediments, giving the works a tangible material presence through which the viewers can feel the weight of time accumulated in each stratum. This approach redefines silk as an archival surface, where memories, dreams, and elusive sensations are recorded like ecological traces. It is a contribution that expands the possibilities of the medium beyond its conventional aesthetic language and toward the realm of material painting.
The 2023 Dogma Prize marked a turning point in the critical recognition of Minh Như’s visual language. Subsequently, the duo exhibition “Vọng cảnh” (2023) opened a dialogue between her artistic practice and that of another artist. Since then, her presence at the Ho Chi Minh City Museum of Fine Art (2023), VCCA (2024),…have continued to shape her practice.
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