Dinh Q. Lê
is participant at
A New Geography of Art in the Making
Abstract
The First Time I Committed Career Suicide
What does it means for an artist to practice in a place where the government decides what you can and can not exhibit, a place that has no contemporary art institution, no curator, where international curators rarely visit, and the internet is illegal. This place was Vietnam in the early 90s. Many of these conditions still remain today, but many have changed, as has the art world. All these developments have had a strong impact on the local artists and their practices. My talk will focus on the developments that took place in the art scene in Vietnam over the last ten years, paralleling it with my journey as an artist who decided to return to live and practice in Vietnam in the early 90s, a move that my peers in the US called “career suicide”.
