Brit Micho, Associate Curator of Exhibitions
I was fortunate enough to travel to Vietnam and Cambodia at the beginning of last year. During this trip I visited the infamous Cambodian Genocide Memorials, Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields, as well as other historically important prisoner camps. It was only after this trip that I was introduced to Dinh Q. Lê’s bold photo-weavings which speak to the impact of these atrocities on the Vietnamese diaspora. Lê passed away suddenly last year, so I wanted to honor his work and his life with a solo exhibition at FWMoA.
Dinh Q. Lê (1968-2024) was a Vietnamese-American artist known for his large-scale photo-weavings that examine the conflicting international narratives of the Vietnam War (1955-1975) and the Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979). His work physically weaves together the ‘truths’ of historic media, opening a dialogue between the subject matter and the narratives to create a landscape that is neither fact nor fiction.
Forced to flee Vietnam in 1978 under threat of the Khmer Rouge, Dinh Q. Lê and his family immigrated to the United States where he studied art until his eventual return to Vietnam in 1996. Informed by his personal experience, Lê’s series pieces together fractured histories and identities to examine the opposing realities endured by refugees around the world. As displaced Vietnamese people living in America, these realities include loss, oppression, and corruption.
Upon entering into the exhibition, I felt that Lê’s most striking work should greet the viewers. While it is untitled, it is from his The Hill of Poisonous Trees series, which takes its name from the direct translation of Tuol Sleng, the name given to a former Khmer Rouge prison and interrogation center. In an attempt to create a classless agrarian society, the radical communist movement ruled Cambodia between 1975-1979. An estimated 20,000 dissidents were incarcerated at Tuol Sleng during this time. Today, that prison stands as a memorial and testimony to those that lost their lives under the regime, estimated to total up to 2 million people.
The vertical strips of Lê’s photo-weaving depict a political prisoner cell in Tuol Sleng, saturated in warm tones. The photograph woven horizontally shows ghostly, monochromatic portraits of a boy and a young man that were imprisoned within the detention center. The portraits woven into the piece were taken by the Khmer Rouge as part of their interrogation process and were later found once the prison was abandoned. Lê confronts photographic journalism’s severe limitations in expressing the complexity of the war, stating that, “Photography captures moments but never tells the complete story.” Untitled from The Hill of Poisonous Trees merges memory and history, standing as a testimony to the lives that once passed through its halls.
Lê’s weaving technique references the patterns in traditional Vietnamese grass mats. As a child, he learned the craft from his aunt, watching and occasionally assisting her as she wove. It was not until graduate school that Lê’s interest in blending cultures and identities led him to experiment with this technique. Using dissimilar photographic images, he cut them into strips and wove them together to create a narrative of fact, fiction, and personal recollection.
One of the major highlights of Lê’s work, from a curatorial standpoint, is his Texture of Memory series which invites the viewers to actually touch the art! Seldom do people get to touch work in museums, which is why the multi-sensory nature of this work piqued my interest in bringing this to our community.
Lê’s white monochromatic Texture of Memory series presents intended illegibility. Distinct from his photo-weavings, Lê embroidered portraits depict men, women, and children who were interrogated and murdered in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge. In the aftermath of these atrocities, Cambodian refugees reported blindness as a neurological response to post-traumatic stress.
Lê honored this fact through the Texture of Memory series, intending these works to be touched in order to “see” the image, similar to reading braille. Lê stated that “Viewers will be invited to touch the embroidered parts and the oil from their hands will darken the white threads. The images will become more articulated and visible over time, comparable to the shiny textures found on bas reliefs at Angkor Wat.”
Differing from his typical imagery, Lê’s Tapestry Series brings a burst of color to his oeuvre of photo-weavings. Inspired by Op Art—abstract art that focuses on optical illusions—and floral iconography, Lê created tapestries that touch on the importance of flowers in Vietnamese culture. Used in ceremonies such as funerals or celebrations, flowers convey various meanings depending on the color and species displayed. For instance, pink flowers symbolize vitality, compassion, or empathy while white and purple flowers represent purity, mourning, and death. Utilizing photos from flower markets in Vietnam, these energetic yet personal tapestries memorialize Vietnamese lives lost to the war, while also signifying a prosperous future for the country. Since his untimely death in 2024, Lê’s Tapestry series now, inadvertently, serves as a memorial for his life and his work.
If you would like to view these complex, large-scale works in person, Weaving the Narrative: The works of Dinh Q. Lê will be on display at FWMoA until September 27.