Nguyen Thi Chau Giang, Village Talk (triptych), 1999, oil on canvas, 160x160cm. Courtesy of Suzanne Lecht, Art Vietnam Gallery Hanoi , Vietnam and the Fielding Lecht Gallery Austin , Texas

Changing Identity
Recent Works by Women Artists from Vietnam

Nora Annesley Taylor, PhD

Art, Women, Vietnam

Putting together an exhibition of women artists from Vietnam runs the risk of creating a single category out of artists who are women and Vietnamese. This exhibition intends to do the opposite by asking questions: Who are Vietnamese women artists? Are they a single group of individuals? Are they different versions of a single genre? Or a different genre of different women? To answer these questions one must ponder the meaning and context of the three words that form this imaginary category. Do they form a coherent image? The word woman has its own familiar set of associations and ring of stereotypes and representations. If you add the word artist to it and then the word Vietnam you may have to come up with an image of a Vietnamese woman artist but are Vietnamese women artists a category that one can immediately sum up and conjure an image of? Similarly, if one thinks of Vietnam as a land of war, rice paddies or Buddhist temples, can one affix an image of a woman and art aside it? This exhibition invites its viewers to contemplate a variety of images. Images that do not quite match up to expectations of what the sum of those three words refer to: Art, Women and Vietnam . While the exhibition is of work made by women artists from Vietnam , it is in no way an exhaustive nor definitive portrait of what it means to be a woman, an artist or Vietnamese today. The works presented here are merely views expressed by 10 women who happen to be Vietnamese and artists, about their selves, their lives, their country, their beliefs and their ideas. Rather than merely an exhibition of women artists or of Vietnamese artists, the exhibition intends to cause the viewer to reflect on women's identities, their means of self expression, their livelihood within a masculine socialist system while at the same time offering works of Vietnamese art that are at the forefront of Vietnamese creation and those that happen to be made by women.

Trinh T.Minh-Ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism . Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1989.

The number of group exhibitions of Vietnamese art has risen steadily since the first exhibition of contemporary Vietnamese art outside of Vietnam took place in Hong Kong in 1991, but the number of women appearing in these exhibitions has not. In the exhibition “Uncorked Soul” 2 out of the 13 artists participating were women. In the exhibition “ Winding River ” at the Meridien International Center in 1998, there were only 5 women out of 104 represented. Galerie La Vong in Hong Kong does not list any women artists in its list of artists represented. A more recent show of 4 women artists including two of the artists represented in this exhibition took place in 2004 at the Vietnam National Museum of Fine Arts but was organized by the artists themselves.

Vu Thu Hien, Fish Flower Spirits, 2006, watercolor on rice paper, 107x76cm. Courtesy of Raquelle Azran Vietnamese Contemporary Fine Art.
Dinh Thi Tham Poong, Gardens of Eden , 2004, watercolor on rice paper, 80x62cm. Courtesy of Raquelle Azran Vietnamese Contemporary Fine Art.

Vietnamese Women in Vietnamese History

The Vietnamese people originated in the Red River Delta, in today's northern Vietnam . Excavations into Vietnamese people's past have revealed human presence in the delta as early as 600,000 BC. Bronze Age artifacts were discovered dating to 5,000 BC. Chinese historical texts mention the founding of a unified political territory in the Red River Delta that was later occupied by the Chinese empire around the 1st century BC.(3) The Vietnamese trace their ancestry to the union between a dragon and a fairy that gave birth to their first king, An Duong Vuong.(4) According to Vietnamese historical sources, the first dynasty of Vietnamese kings descended from An Duong Vuong. Known as the Hung kings, they ruled northern Vietnam starting in the 3 rd century BC prior to the Chinese invasion. Vietnamese folklore is rich in tales about women who defy expectations and challenge prevailing norms. Daughters who choose not to marry the husband chosen for them by their fathers, wives who fight against their husbands' desire for mistresses and concubines and mothers who will their children to follow their wishes. A famous tale concerns two sisters who lead the entire Vietnamese army against Chinese invaders in 43 AD. Known as the Trung sisters, they are still revered today as spirits who sacrificed their high society ranks for the sake of defending the nation.

Still, the Chinese occupation of Vietnam brought along with it centuries of Confucian morals imposed on what was believed to be a strong matriarchal society. Vietnamese gained independence in the 11 th century under the Ly dynasty and experienced a sort of renaissance that saw the flourishing of Buddhism and the blossoming of local art traditions. However, Confucian ethnics prevailed and girls were raised to obey their fathers; wives, their husbands and mothers, their sons. Women were not allowed to own property and often lived in their in-law households. Things began to change for women under French colonialism when France occupied Vietnam under the administrative territory of Indochina . Under the French, Vietnamese women migrated to the city, often as domestic help for French colonial households, sometimes as prostitutes, but mostly to work in the newly developed factories, shops and industrial sectors. Coming to the city and interacting with French women gave the Vietnamese an opportunity to draw awareness to the “feudal” and “backward” conditions of Vietnamese women. Women's journals and magazines were inaugurated encouraging women to learn to read. These journals combined the women's emancipation movement with the growing anti-colonial movement but not always successfully. Articles about politics figured side by side with recipes and embroidery lessons. As one nationalist leader advocated “women can only be liberated after the country has been liberated.”(5)

When Ho Chi Minh came to power and declared Vietnam an independent democratic republic in 1945, he gave women equal responsibilities in the new society's parliament and industrial, health and education sectors. Women became heads of factories and participated in the country's economic revitalization plan. When the country went to war with the south, women were recruited not just as nurses and cooks but also as fighters and intelligence agents. After the war, many of them received medals for their courage and sacrifice. But the cost was great as women were also raped, killed or imprisoned. Many lost their sons, fathers and husbands during the decades of turmoil. After the war, when the country faced a decade of extreme hunger and poverty, women had to work in the fields, scavenge for food and live on government food rations. It was not until 1986 when the government instituted its economic reform known as Doi Moi that women began to gain financial independence and in many cases, social independence as well. The 1986 reforms allowed Vietnamese citizens to own and operate private businesses which has led to a boom in the nation's economy and dramatically improved individual lives. Women, especially, took advantage of the reforms to quit their low paying government jobs and work in the private sector. This has also had social ramifications as many women also chose to leave their husbands and live and raise their families on their own.(6) A popular novel that describes the struggles of three women over two generations in adapting to the social upheaval caused by communism and post-war economic strife was written by Duong Thu Huong in the late 1980s. Entitled Paradise of the Blind (7), it was banned from publication after its initial printing due to its critical view of Communism. But it is an excellent illustration of the conditions in which women have lived in the last decades of the 20 th century.

To be a woman in Vietnam today is to live under the expectations of a masculine, socialist and emerging capitalist society; but to be a woman of Vietnam is also to be expected to conform to an image of that country in the eyes of the West. Images of war are the ones that most immediately come to mind. Most outsiders to Vietnam are familiar with photographs of a girl running down the street burned by Napalm, mothers protecting their children, female Viet Minh soldiers in their black uniform holding a rifle and school girls in white Ao Dai cycling through the rubble after air raids in Hue . American images of Vietnam are also associated with the aftermath of war in the form of boat people, refugees, adoptees and Amerasians. To speak of Vietnamese women from a Western perspective then, is often to speak about suffering and victimization. These are not necessarily the ways in which Vietnamese women describe their selves nor how they are portrayed in Vietnam . During the war with America , women were often portrayed as war heroines, model socialist workers, factory leaders and heroic mothers. Traditionally, women were also subject to the rules established by Confucianism and as young girls were taught to embroider, dress appropriately, sing, recite poetry and cook to enter society and follow the proper conduct and behavior established by men in order to be dutiful daughters, wives and mothers. Today, of course, much of this has changed and women's roles have too, accordingly. Women have had to adapt to the changing circumstances of Vietnamese history. Not necessarily allowed to be leaders of change, they have nonetheless expressed their voices, mostly softly and often unheard, through literature and art. It is these voices that this exhibition captures.

Keith W. Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam , Berkeley : University of California Press, 1983.

For a retelling of the legend read Nguyet Cam Nguyen and Dana Sachs, Two Cakes Fit for a King: Folktales from Vietnam , Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press , 2003.

Phan Boi Chau as recounted in David Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial,1920-1945 , Berkeley : University of California Press , 1981.

Ashley Pettus, Between Sacrifice and Desire, National Identity and the Governing of Femininity in Vietnam , London : Routledge, 2003

Duong Thu Huong, Paradise of the Blind , Phan Huy Duong and Nina McPherson translators, New York : Harper Collins, 2002

(1) Trinh T.Minh-Ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.
(2) The number of group exhibitions of Vietnamese art has risen steadily since the first exhibition of contemporary Vietnamese art outside of Vietnam took place in Hong Kong in 1991, but the number of women appearing in these exhibitions has not. In the exhibition “Uncorked Soul” 2 out of the 13 artists participating were women. In the exhibition “Winding River” at the Meridien International Center in 1998, there were only 5 women out of 104 represented. Galerie La Vong in Hong Kong does not list any women artists in its list of artists represented. A more recent show of 4 women artists including two of the artists represented in this exhibition took place in 2004 at the Vietnam National Museum of Fine Arts but was organized by the artists themselves.
(3) Keith W. Taylor, The Birth of Vietnam, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
(4) For a retelling of the legend read Nguyet Cam Nguyen and Dana Sachs, Two Cakes Fit for a King: Folktales from Vietnam, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003.
(5) Phan Boi Chau as recounted in David Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial,1920-1945, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.
(6) Ashley Pettus, Between Sacrifice and Desire, National Identity and the Governing of Femininity in Vietnam, London: Routledge, 2003
(7) Duong Thu Huong, Paradise of the Blind, Phan Huy Duong and Nina McPherson translators, New York: Harper Collins, 2002