Titi Mary Tran/Nguoi-Viet English
Art is alive and well in the Vietnamese American community.
Never has that been more evident when six artists joined recently to present an exhibit of their work called Reminiscence, which focused on women’s roles in the Vietnamese family, at the Nguoi Viet News community room. The who’s who in attendance were treated to works showcasing the secret world of Vietnamese royal beauty, the love of the simple but wonderful life in the Vietnamese countryside, and angst of realism and fate of Vietnamese women to the practical necessity of their existence, nature and strength.
With 39 paintings and one sculpture showcased, the artists –Ann Phong, Nguyễn Việt Hùng, Nguyễn Khai, Nguyễn Thị Hợp, Nguyễn Đồng and Dương Văn Hùng — presented their recognizable and signature strokes and techniques of their arts. They shared with Nguoi Viet what inspires them.
The simplicity and beauty of the Vietnamese countryside
Nguyễn Thị Hợp is known for her strokes that describe the nuances of everyday livings and everyday people in traditional Vietnamese families.
“I look at the beauty of countryside women. They are so natural, a natural beauty. Like the way they pull up their blouses, show their breasts and feed their children. No shame or shyness whatsoever. That’s the image I see,” she said. “Mother and children is my favorite topic.”
Nguyễn Đồng, Hợp’s husband and art-partner, brings the meanings of life into the historical circumstances of his country.
“If you think a bit further,” Đồng said, “it’s a very big question. Who brings us from our homeland to here?”
Abstract art and realism
Abstract painting is Ann Phong’s signature. She escaped Vietnam’s communist regime alone as a refugee via a boat and she tries to deal with her life experiences and the traumas of others’ through her arts. She rarely used bright colors in her paintings until the past few years. In each of her paintings, there is a story.
“Sometimes I think about my life experiences through different periods of Vietnamese history, from before ’75 until now, I feel I am very lucky,” she said. “I can do what I want, like becoming an artist. Not everyone can be that lucky. But with a sensibility of an artist, I can put my foot into other people’s shoes. I can feel other people’s feelings. Sometimes, I read about how women are suffered in many ways, I want to paint to raise their voice. I don’t write very well, so I chose visual arts to voice.”
Nguyễn Việt Hùng, on the other hand, uses miniature construction-like tools –not a paint brush but something resembling a triangular-pointed shovel — to create his signature’ strokes that look like Japanese sand art. At first, “what you see is what you get” seems to be the recurring theme throughout his paintings. But the hidden messages are so obvious that they give nature lovers an illusion of realness in women’s bodies. After all, nature has her own beauty; it’s only natural to show hers.
“Women are people who are necessity of my life. Without them, I’m in trouble,” Hùng said. I like women. The hidden messages in my paintings are something that is very natural, that when men come to women, beside love and understanding, there is desire and sexuality. In Asian culture, people shy away from it, but to me, it is a natural thing. I can’t describe it to everyone, but I can show that idea.”
Vietnamese women: A source of creative imagination and stability
While Nguyễn Thị Hợp and Nguyễn Đồng fascinate with the countryside’s beauty of nature, water body and natural scenery, Nguyên Khai is allured with the mystic elegance and glamor of royal beauty. His fluid strokes of Vietnamese women in the traditional ao dai bring out that Vietnamese nuances and have become his signature.
He was born of royalty’s blood, and his first painting was of a royal Vietnamese princess, one of his siblings, who was living at the royal palace in Hue.
“I want to bring out the images of Vietnamese ao dai, of Vietnamese people,” he said. “I always look for beauty, and follow that beauty and draw. I don’t draw ugly things.”
But beauty in an artist’s eyes can be anything and everything.
Dương Văn Hùng does not see Vietnamese women as a mystified beauty to pursue and to worship. He sees them as a source of stability and as foundations for life.
“My philosophy is this, like architecture, the foundation must be built first when you build something. The foundation must be solid and strong, and then people build on this foundation,” Dương said. “The stronger the foundation, the stronger whatever is above it. Very difficult to crumble. And like a mother carrying her child, the women are the foundation that gives births to those children, who are the future of humanity.”