Dinh Q. Lê

Dinh Q. Lê (born 1968; Vietnamese name: Lê Quang Đỉnh) is a Vietnamese American fine arts photographer, best known for his woven-photographs.

Early life and education

Lê was born in 1968 in Hà Tiên, a Vietnamese town near the Cambodia border. The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia took place in 1978, when Lê was ten, his family emigrated to Los Angeles thereafter. After Lê received BFA degree in photography from University of California, Santa Barbara, inspired and taught by his aunt during childhood, he started his first photo-weavings using a traditional technique. He earned his MFA degree from The School of Visual Arts in New York.[1] His artwork includes installation, video, sculpture, and urban intervention.

Career

By weaving strips of photos together using a planting procedure, Lê creates large-scale photo-montages. Images are layered in a repetition of patterning with glossy tapestries made entirely out of type C prints that reveal his feelings. Linen tape is used to finish the edges, with his meticulous and precise craftsmanship.

The helicopter from the video installation The Farmers and the Helicopters (2006)

His work includes both his collective memories and anxieties. His mixed feelings are presented by different characters in his work such as "the cowgirl-costumed Playboy Bunny toting a toy pistol from Apocalypse Now intertwined with South Vietnamese General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan and Viet Cong suspect Bay L op".

He also worked with Cambodian refugee children and often addresses personal experience of life in Vietnam during and after the war.

Lê's artwork has been the theme of solo exhibitions at the Houston Center for Photography, the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies in an exhibition titled The Headless Buddha, which traveled to Portland, Oregon, Cambridge, Massachusetts and Santa Cruz, California. In 2000 he presented the exhibition "Cambodia: Splendour and Darkness" at the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky. In 2004, he was included in Beyond Boundaries: Contemporary Photography In California, an exhibition which traveled to California State University, Long Beach, California and to the Friends of Photography in San Francisco, California. This show follows his exhibition at the UC Santa Barbara Museum in Spring 2003.

The first major survey of Dinh's work, "A Tapestry of Memories: The Art of Dinh Q. Le", was organized by Bellevue Arts Museum, in Bellevue, WA, and an accompanying catalog was published.

The Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art have also acquired his works since 2004. The Asia Society has invited Dinh Q. Lê to participate in a solo show in 2005.

In 2007, Lê co-founded the non-profit art space Sàn Art (Ho Chi Minh City) along with Tiffany Chung and Tuan Andrew Nguyen and Phunam Thuc Ha of The Propeller Group.[2]

The Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney, Australia commissioned and exhibited Erasure – an interactive sculptural and video installation that draws on recent debates in Australia concerning refugees and asylum seekers – which was shown from July – September, 2011.[3]

In 2016 he produced "The Colony", an installation about a guano island. It was supported by Artangel.

Awards

  • Gunk Foundation Public Project Grant in 1998
  • NEA Fellowship in Photography 1994
  • The Dupont Fellowship in 1994
  • The Aaron Siskind Fellowship in 1992
  • The Prince Claus Fund Award in 2010

References

  1. ↑ Johnson, Ken. "Images of Vietnamese in the Generation Since the War", October 7, 2005. Accessed November 27, 2007. "Mr. Le came to the United States with his family when he was 11 and eventually received a master of fine arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan."
  2. ↑ "The Propeller Group". Guggenheim. Retrieved 6 March 2015.
  3. ↑ "ERASURE". erasurearchive.net.
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