Le Thuy/ Unihabited (Young Talent Programme 2016/17)

Le Thuy has developed her personal narrative using her painting as philosophical life witness. She paints on silk, inspised by traditional Vietnamese folk narratives. Common animals like dogs, deer,birds, fish and insects populate her paintings. However, the animal imagery of Le Thuy’s painting are personifications for struggles faced and often they are characterized either as victims or as destructive elements. Embedded in thuy’s intentionally beautiful compositions are elements of disturbance, decay and death. Thuy has been successful in manipulating the Vietnamese classical medium of silk painting to house a contemporary monologue on the contracdiction of beauty and, or in, death.
Thuy’s earlier works exhibited in the fist portion of this programme were self-portraits that discourse her personal awreness, vulnerability and innocence. This new work is created based on introspecyion an Baudelairean philosophy. Her work has resonances from fork-inspired artists like Thanh Chuong, and Nguyen Tu Nghiem, but also the influence of the mordem Vietnamese masters like Le Pho. These artists form the waterbed for expressions of foreboding and death are much less lyrical, displaying a morbidity that is unusual in the mainstream of Vietnamese contemporary art.