A Group Exhibition by Antonius-Tin Bui, Ha Tri Hieu, Vo Tran Chau, Vu Kim Thu, Nguyen Cam, Dinh Thi Tham Poong, Pham Van Tuan, Le Thuy and Le Thua Tien.
Việt Nam: Tradition Upended
A group exhibition in collaboration with Flinn Gallery, Greenwich, Connecticut
Opening party September 18, 6:00pm
Exhibition from September 18 to November 12, 2025
Flinn Gallery
Greenwich Library
101 West Putnam Avenue
Second Floor
Greenwich, CT 06830, USA
Why Vietnam? Why Now?
With 2025 marking exactly half a century since the end of the Vietnam War, and 30 years since the normalization of relations between Vietnam and the United States, we arrive at a resonant threshold. This is a moment for reflection, a time to reframe the narrative—not of war and division, but of resilience, renewal, and radiant creativity. Vietnam, once defined by struggle, now emerges as one of the most compelling artistic voices in Southeast Asia.
To understand the richness of Vietnam’s art today, we must look back across centuries of resistance. For over a thousand years, Vietnam endured occupation and control by imperial China. This was followed by a century under French colonial rule, which imposed Western education, architecture, and ideology while exploiting the land and its people. Barely free of one colonial shadow, Vietnam was thrust into the turmoil of the American War, as it is known to the Vietnamese, a conflict that devastated its countryside and fractured its families, leaving deep psychic and physical scars.
How does a people survive so much loss—of land, voice, memory—and still find the will to create?
It is perhaps in this crucible of historical suffering that Vietnamese art finds its singular strength. Art became, and remains, a form of survival, of quiet rebellion, of cultural continuity. During long eras of censorship and constraint, artists embedded meaning in metaphor—collaging fragments of the past to honor history, using thread and fabric to stitch together lost stories. They carved beauty from absence. They protected memory in pigment and paper, and encoded resistance in poetry and paint.
Art Vietnam Gallery of Hanoi, in collaboration with the Flinn Gallery in Greenwich, Connecticut, presents Vietnam: Tradition Upended. This exhibition, the first of the Flinn Gallery’s 2025–2026 season, introduces nine visionary Vietnamese artists working across a spectrum of media—lacquer, silk, paper, woodblock, installation, embroidery, ink, and light sculpture. They mine history not to reenact the past, but to transform it. They bend tradition not to break it, but to speak from within it, with new voices. Their work reimagines what it means to remember, to belong, to heal.
Nguyen Cam, the most senior artist, exiled at a young age, transforms humble materials—incense sticks, paper offerings, cardboard, rice sacks—into works of vitality and movement with sweeping calligraphic strokes that fuse the ordinary with the sublime. Nom scholar Pham Van Tuan, a generation younger, mirrors Cam through scrolls layered with fragments of the ancient script, seals, and bold brushwork, blending tradition and modernity.
Dinh Thi Tham Poong and Le Thua Tien reimagine lacquer, layering life and memory beyond convention. Ha Tri Hieu of the Gang of Five distorts portraiture with flat planes, stark colors, and unexpected angles, while Antonius-Tin Bui slices paper into fractured yet resilient forms of body and spirit, revealing both vulnerability and strength.
Le Thuy and Vu Kim Thu conjure ethereal landscapes in silk and handmade paper, shifting with light and time, fleeting yet timeless. Vo Tran Chau reconstructs memory from discarded fabrics, weaving delicate reflections on history, exploitation, and resilience—asking how we might confront greed, indifference, and the divisions of our time in the face of climate change and alienation.
Born of years of dialogue and trust, this is more than an exhibition. Vietnam: Tradition Upended is an invitation—to witness the grace that can emerge from devastation, to honor the human spirit’s enduring ability to create beauty from pain. It is a bridge between past and present, between East and West, between silence and voice. It is a space to ask: How do we remember without being imprisoned by memory? How do we break cycles of trauma? And how can art—silent, ephemeral, yet searing—lead us toward understanding?
From a land where words were once forbidden and brushstrokes controlled; a new language has risen luminous, intricate, defiant, and free.
Please come join us in celebrating these historic moments in time.
Suzanne Lecht
Art Director
Art Vietnam Gallery
Hanoi Vietnam
EVENTS
Thursday, September 18, 6 – 8pm, Flinn Gallery
Opening Reception
Saturday, September 20, 2pm, Flinn Gallery
Artist Talk with Antonius-Tin Bui and Vu Kim Thu
Friday, September 26, 5 – 6:45pm, Flinn Gallery
Art Lounge: Extended gallery hours prior to the Friends Friday Film The Scent of Green Papaya
Friday, September 26, 7pm, Berkley Theater
Friends Friday Film: The Scent of Green Papaya
Saturday, September 27, 2pm, Flinn Gallery
Gallery Walkthrough with Co-Curator Suzanne Lecht, Art Vietnam Gallery
