Performing Vietnamerica
50 Years after the War
Friday
April 11, 2025
In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second Indochinese War / Vietnam War / American War, performance artists Ly Hoàng Ly (Vietnam) and Việt Lê (U.S.) will be in residence at UVa from April 7-11 to commemorate the afterlives of war as well as the ongoing transformations of both Vietnam and the U.S. in its wake. For more information, and the full symposium schedule, please see https://americanstudies.as.virginia.edu/performing-vietnamerica-50-years-after-war.
12-2pm in 117 Wilson Hall
2-4pm in 142 Wilson Hall
a symposium featuring talks by UVA faculty
and film screenings and Q&A with performance artists
Ly Hoàng Ly, Việt Lê, and Patricia Nguyễn
4-5pm in Wilson Hall 1st floor lobby
reception / dinner
6-7pm in UVA Chapel
thương
Việt Lê and Ly Hoàng Ly | 2 person solo show
sponsored by the Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation, Page-Barbour Lectures,
East Asia Center, and Department of American Studies
About the artists:
Ly Hoàng Ly, currently based in Ho Chi Minh City, is a multidisciplinary artist working across poetry, painting, video, performance art, artist’s book, installation and public art. Ly received a Fulbright Scholarship and earned her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), majoring in Sculpture in 2013. She spent a year from 2013 to 2014 interning at the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection (JFABC, SAIC). She also works as a book editor of Youth Publishing House in Ho Chi Minh City since 2000. Ly is the first woman visual artist in Vietnam practicing performance art and poetry performance. Her installations incorporate a level of performance or activation between subjects and objects that unlock sensual affects in the human-materiality nexus. Since 2011, Ly has explored the relationship of freedom and surveillance, inherited trauma, the ephemeral materiality of memory, the dislocation and the importance of community and human connection, the association of the loss of nature and human mortality. Ly has exhibited widely in and outside of Vietnam such as The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT9) at Queensland Art Gallery /Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2018); APT Selection at Centro Cultural La Moneda, Santiago, Chile (2019); Blood, Sweat and Tears – START 2017 (Saatchi Gallery, London, UK, 2017); Zonas Grises – Grey Zones (Museo de Antioquia, Colombia, 2016-2017). 2023, 2022 and 2017 saw Ly open her most important and largest solo exhibitions in Vietnam at San Art (Ho Chi Minh City), Manzi Art Space (Ha Noi), and The Factory Contemporary Arts Centre (Ho Chi Minh City), respectively.
Việt Lê’s creative and critical practice as a queer, disabled artist focuses on sexualities, spiritualities—the physical and the metaphysical. Dr. Lê is the author of Return Engagements (Duke University Press, 2021, which received the 2023 Outstanding Book Award in Media and Visual Culture from the Association of Asian American Studies), and collaborated with Latipa on the art book White Gaze (Sming Sming Books | Candor Art, 2019), which is in the collection of museums internationally including the Guggenheim, Victoria and Albert Museum, SF MOMA, and in over 200 libraries. Việt Lê is Professor Emeritus at California College of the Arts (former Chair, Visual & Critical Studies graduate program). They are a 2022-24 Headlands Bay Area Fellow and ‘22 Stanford CCSRE Mellon Arts Fellow. Lê has presented their work at The Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada; UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA; DoBaeBacSa Gallery, Seoul, Korea; Sàn Art, Việt Nam; 1a Space, Hong Kong; Bangkok Art & Cultural Center (BACC), Thailand; Civitella Ranieri, Italy; Shanghai Biennale, China; Rio Gay Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; among other venues.
Patricia Nguyen is an artist, educator, and scholar born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. She is currently an Assistant Professor in American Studies at the University of Virginia. Her research and performance work examines critical refugee studies, political economy, forced migration, oral histories, inherited trauma, torture, and nation building in the United States and Vietnam. Dr. Nguyen has over 20 years experience working in arts education, community development, and human rights in the United States and Vietnam. As a performance artist, she has performed at the Nha San Collective in Vietnam, Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco, Jane Addams Hull House, Oberlin College, Northwestern University, U. of Massachusetts Boston, Links Hall, Prague Quadrennial, Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Milwaukee Art Museum, and Contemporary Arts Network. She is co-founder and executive director of Axis Lab, a community centered art, food, and design studio based in Uptown, Chicago. In recent news, she is an award-winning designer for the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Project, part of a historic reparations ordinance.