A look back on Vietnam’s fine arts in 2015

The Tet Art Fair

For many centuries, the shopping demand for fine arts of a majority of Vietnamese people seemed to be strongly attached to Tet (traditional lunar New Year festival). They prepare for the holiday by buying food and new clothes. People also adorn their houses with a branch of peace blossom or apricot flower, an ornamental pot, decoration boards with couplets (or “parallel sentences”), and paintings.

With an aim to meet the demand, Nguyen Hong Phuong and Tran Dan in co-ordination with Hang Da Market management board launched a contemporary Tet Art Fair at the end of 2014. The fair gathered over 50 young artists with 40 booths showcasing paintings, sculpture products, photos and handicraft products at reasonable prices targeting domestic customers.

The fair ran through the Tet holiday and is still operating with a series of fine arts activities. It has become a familiar event for city dwellers who are searching for fine arts products.

This Tet holiday, if you want a new painting for your house, a statue or an eye-catching handicraft product for your friends and relatives, don’t waste your time wandering galleries in Hanoi, just go straight to the Tet Art Fair and meet directly with the arts to take an item of your liking.

The return of Overseas Vietnamese artists and their artworks

The year 2015 also marked the return of artworks by late Vietnamese painters who lived abroad for more than half of a century, including Le Pho, Vu Cao Dam, Mai Trung Thu and Le Thi Luu. Despite living far away from their motherland, the painters, belonging to the early generation students of the Indochina College of Fine Arts, still retained a deep attachment to the homeland. They blended national identity with the cultural essence of their host country in the artworks, which helped them establish their reputation in the world.

However, Vietnamese art lovers only know them through their reputation rather than their artworks. Luckily, in mid-October, Vietnamese people were able to take on the artworks of these artists for the first time at an exhibition themed ‘Art of Vietnam – Another Look’. The 50 artworks on display were from the private collection of Nguyen Minh, who has participated in international art auctions of Christie’s, Sotheby’s and others.

Many famous Overseas Vietnamese artists also chose 2015 to come back to their fatherland to hold arts events. Among the artists is Tran Trong Vu, who is living in France, and his programme titled ‘Month of Artistic Practice’ at the Heritage Space in Hanoi. Four exhibitions were held under the programme, providing cultural exchanges of contemporary art between Vietnamese artists and international artists.

Foreign cultural institutions such as the Japan Foundation Centre for Cultural Exchange in Vietnam and L'Espace French Cultural Centre have continued working to introduce their artists to Vietnamese people. Notably, arts projects sponsored by foreign funds have positively thrived.

Other projects succeeded in bringing together artworks by many artists, such as ‘Bravo’ a project on drawing posters and propaganda posters - hosted by Dinh Thi Tham Poong - attracted 56 artists.

Another was a community project receiving 54 artists from across the country, who auctioned their artworks to collect money to rebuild ‘Lang’ ancient house Muong’s Cultural Space Museum after it was destroyed in a fire.

An array of solo exhibitions by painters and sculptors in different generations was also successfully organised, such as Tran Van Tru, Ly Truc Son, Nguyen Xuan Tiep, Khong Do Tuyen, Luong Van Viet and Tran Trong Tri.

The National Fine Arts Exhibition

Also in 2015, the biggest fine arts event over the past five year took place: the 18th National Fine Arts Exhibition.

During the two national resistance wars, the event was dubbed as a “congress” to find out most outstanding artworks and the country’s cultural life trend every past year.

The 2015 exhibition showed innovations in organisation and curatorship - the number of displayed artworks accounted for only 10% of the total number of submissions.

Nevertheless, the event also revealed shortcomings, such as the absence of recently-rising artists. Most of the entries were produced over the past two or three years, but were not the best works of the artists over the past five years.

Contemporary artworks presented at the exhibition only captured things on the surface through images rather than digging into the depth and beauty of people in today’s life.

It is hoped that the organising board will learn from experiences and shortcomings to lift the nation-scale event, making it a true sum-up meeting for the country’s fine arts.