Dinh Q. Lê. Photo: Tyuki Imamura.
by News Desk
April 9, 2024 1:12 pm
Vietnamese-born multimedia artist Dinh Q. Lê, whose work explored the trauma wrought by the Vietnam War, died of a stroke April 6 at his home in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He was fifty-six. His death was confirmed by New York gallery P.P.O.W. In a practice that encompassed photography, video, sculpture, and installation, Lê explored the experiences and perspectives of his forebears as well as his own as a Vietnamese American gay man to create work of tremendous emotional power. Much of his art critiqued the American take on the Vietnam War—or the American War, as it was known in his own country—and addressed the issues of identity and history that arose from the conflict, including stereotyping, censorship, migration, and exploitation. “The continued systematic erasure of the history of Southern Vietnam by the current government, the lack of analysis of our cultural resources, strict governmental control of the flow of information, and the self-censorship that is so deeply ingrained in current Vietnamese society have together led us to a point at which we know very little about either who we were or who we are,” he told the Guggenheim’s Zoe Butt in 2013. “There is an urgent need for expressions of collective memory freed from restraint; many people are actively engaged in building these narratives—I chose to do so through art.”
