Papers

• Archives, Memory, and the History of Arts in Vietnam: Challenges in Developing an Online Database Jade Thau InVisu - IrAsia, Aix Marseille Université

  This paper aims to present the methods, challenges, and some findings of my research on the history of Vietnamese art. It pays particular attention to the role of archives—both institutional and private—in shaping competing narratives of memory in post-socialist Vietnam. It also seeks to introduce the online database VISTA, which currently features images from my dissertation corpus. Continuously enriched as my research progresses, the database aims to gather, showcase, and make accessible—both to scholars and the public—works scattered across public and private institutions in Vietnam and abroad. In this sense, VISTA is conceived not only as a repository, but also as a tool for rethinking the visibility and transmission of artistic memory. Ultimately, it seeks to highlight the diversity and richness of an artistic production too often perceived as homogeneous: official state art and so-called “nonconformist” paintings will both be represented within this database across various collections. To document the context of artistic production during this period, textual and audio archives will complement, whenever possible, the information provided by the artworks, thereby contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the relationships between art, archive, and memory.

• Vietnamese Contemporary Art: The Journey of Hybrid Art – Intersection between Traditional and Modern Culture Huong Doan Thi My Vietnam Institute of Culture, Arts, Sports and Tourism

  Vietnamese Contemporary Art has been gradually asserting its position on the global stage through a unique path shaped by the convergence of tradition and modernity. This artistic journey began with Vietnamese artists seeking new forms of expression. Through these pioneering experiments, they discovered and developed “Hybrid Art” as an effective strategy to engage and connect with their cultural heritage. This reflects a transformative process where the pursuit of unique creative expression has prompted the profound integration of traditional and modern elements. In this paper, Hybrid Art practices are approached as forms of cultural memory, in which traditional visual languages function as living archives that are reactivated and reinterpreted through contemporary artistic experimentation.
  Due to its experimental and innovative nature, Hybrid Art has yet to be supported by an established framework for its artistic and aesthetic evaluation, posing challenges for researchers. To better understand how new forms of expression inspired hybridity in Vietnamese Contemporary Art and how it enriches these forms within the context of Southeast Asian art, this paper will focus on selected contemporary art practices in Vietnam since the late 20th century, viewing Hybrid Art as a natural outcome of artistic exploration. With the aim to provide new perspectives on the evolution of Vietnamese Contemporary Art, the paper will also analyze the emergence of new art forms, and their roles in promoting Hybrid Art, while identifying traditional legacies that have been integrated, and evaluating the impact of this process on the public and the art market. It is hoped that this paper will encourage a dynamic academic discourse, contributing to clearer understanding of the potentials and challenges of evolving Contemporary Art in Viet Nam nowadays.

• Layered Metal Sculpture as Archival Practice in Đào Châu Hải’s Contemporary Art Quy Duc Le Independent artist and researcher

  This paper examines the layered metal sculptures of Đào Châu Hải as a form of archival practice within contemporary Vietnamese art. Moving beyond a purely formal or material analysis, it approaches layering as a spatial and material strategy through which memory is articulated and transformed. Rather than treating memory as a fixed record, the works foreground a dynamic process shaped through structure, light, and void.
  Focusing on two major bodies of work, Ballad Biển Đông and THINH, the paper explores how different configurations of layered metal articulate distinct modes of memory. Ballad Biển Đông engages with collective and contested memory, evoking histories of migration and maritime experience in ways that resonate with broader Southeast Asian contexts. Through sharp, wave-like steel forms, the work articulates a layered memory of the sea, marked by tensions between remembrance and erasure. In contrast, the THINH series addresses subjective and embodied memory in the context of post-socialist transformation. Its fragmented, bird-like figures suggest conditions of displacement, instability, and introspective negotiation.
  By situating these works within Vietnamese and broader Southeast Asian artistic and historical contexts, the study contributes to ongoing discussions on how contemporary art mobilizes materiality and spatial structure to produce alternative forms of archive and memory. It further offers insight into how archival practices are negotiated in contemporary Southeast Asian art, where global artistic languages are reconfigured through locally grounded material and cultural conditions.

• When the Archive Changes Hands: Danh Vo’s 2.2.1861 and the Afterlife of Colonial Documents Xueyan Chen University of Zurich

  This paper examines Danh Vo’s 2.2.1861 (2009–), a work based on the final 1861 letter of the French missionary Théophane Vénard, written in Tonkin shortly before his execution. Preserved within the history of the Missions Étrangères de Paris, the letter belongs to a colonial archive shaped by missionary expansion and the moral rhetoric that later accompanied French intervention in Vietnam. Rather than returning to the original document as stable historical evidence, Vo reactivates it as a contemporary artistic form. Since 2009, 2.2.1861 has been continuously produced in thousands of handwritten iterations, making it one of the artist’s most sustained engagements with the archival remains of colonial history.
  After acquiring the original letter, Vo commissioned his father, Phung Vo, to copy it by hand in blue ink on white A4 paper; the copies are sold individually, with proceeds shared between father and son. The work gains particular force through the figure of the father himself. Having arrived in Europe as one of the Vietnamese “boat people,” Phung Vo had cultivated a refined cursive hand by writing fast-food menus. It is precisely this displaced skill that 2.2.1861 reactivates: the hand once used for everyday commercial writing now repeatedly copies a nineteenth-century missionary letter. Archival transmission thus takes place through kinship and familial labor, as colonial memory is carried forward not by the state or the museum alone, but through the repetitive work of a migrant father.
  Taking Danh Vo’s 2.2.1861 as its focus, the paper asks how colonial evidence endures once removed from institutional custody and reinscribed through kinship. It further considers how the diasporic condition becomes legible in such works: through the repetition, displacement, and familial transmission of archival fragments rather than through biography alone.

• Reworking the Archive: Memory and Media in the Works of Andrew Tuan Nguyen Thi Thanh Mai Bui Ton Duc Thang University

  This paper examines how contemporary artist Andrew Tuan Nguyen engages with memory and archival materials through multimedia art practices. Focusing on selected video works and installations, it explores the ways in which Nguyen reworks historical documents, visual records, and narrative fragments to construct layered forms of remembrance that move between personal memory and collective history. Rather than treating the archive as a fixed repository of the past, Nguyen approaches it as a dynamic and performative space, where historical materials are reassembled, recontextualized, and mediated through contemporary visual languages. His works draw upon diverse sources, including wartime footage, propaganda imagery, oral histories, and cinematic references, blending documentary elements with speculative storytelling. Through this process, memory emerges not as a stable account of history but as an evolving and mediated experience shaped by technology, narration, and affect. Situated within broader discussions on memory and the archive in contemporary Southeast Asian art, Nguyen’s practice reflects how artists across the region increasingly engage with the legacies of war, displacement, and social transformation. By analyzing how media forms, particularly video and sound, function as tools for archival reworking, this paper highlights the role of artistic practice in negotiating relationships between past and present. Through a close reading of Nguyen’s works, the paper contributes to ongoing dialogues on art, memory, and the archive in Vietnam and the wider Southeast Asian context, suggesting that contemporary art practices offer important insights into how memory is constructed, transmitted, and reimagined beyond conventional historical narratives.

• From digital archives to living memory: how young Vietnamese graphic designers mobilise memories – historical – in their design works through social media. Phuong Trang Do FPT University

  In Vietnam, official archives such as museums, archives, and libraries contain the majority of the country’s historical documentation. Due to restrictions like digital interfaces, access protocols, and data fragmentation, these archives are frequently challenging to access and search. Additionally, as technology advances, young people are increasingly likely to look for material online before visiting archives in person. This is a hurdle for new designers who want to incorporate historical themes and cultural imagery into their work because of the requirement for accuracy. The second source of archives is a dynamic, unofficial one that young designers continuously recreate on a regular basis.
  Today’s youngsters can readily get artistic products and media designs via social media platforms. However, rather than being a targeted method of storage, using historical themes, pictures, and recollections in product design is viewed as a fad and a source of inspiration. Additionally, social media sites are seen as posting outlets that have not been examined as filters or archives. The purpose of this study is to shed light on how young designers use design language integrated into dynamic archives like social media to recreate and reinvent historical themes and recollections. The study defines methods for mobilising pictures of memory and history, the quick spread of these themes, and the ethical obligations in their usage through image analysis of several design projects posted on contemporary social media platforms. The study’s findings are intended to broaden the notion of dynamic memory and history in contemporary graphic design.

Abstract

Keywords

• Andrew Tuan Nguyen
• Danh Vo
• Southeast Asia
• Vietnam
• Vietnamese contemporary art
• archival practice
• archive
• collective memory
• colonial archive
• contemporary art
• contemporary sculpture
• diaspora
• digital archives
• folk art
• graphic design
• hybrid art
• kinship
• living memory
• material archive
• materiality
• memory
• missionary
• social media
• spatial structure
• young designers