Vietnamese-American artist Dinh Q Le’s war-themed works stir painful parallels with today
A Hong Kong exhibition dedicated to the late artist Dinh Q Le highlights his commentary on US military force and the human cost of conflict
“Remembrance”, the title of the solo show at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery dedicated to Dinh Q Le and curated by writer David Elliott, can be read in two ways.
The most pointed one, as intended by its curator, is as a tribute to the work of this exceptional Vietnamese-American artist, who died in 2024.
But a significant thread of remembrance also runs through Le’s work in his constant reflections on the Vietnam war (1955-75) and its ongoing aftermath.
“In Vietnam, it’s called the American war,” underlines Elliott, who has been engaging with Le’s work since 2015.
The show’s selected pieces are mostly from a series of woven photographs considered Le’s signature works.
These are often made using famous pictures printed on a large scale, cut into strips and woven with chromatically contrasting photos, or other images he superimposes, to create layered meanings and suggest new possibilities or interpretations of what we see.