Quỳnh Lâm

30 Jul

Rotting flowers and the politics of memory
By David Willis

Quỳnh Lâm, 'History of Colour', 2019, exhibition installation view at Vincom Contemporary Art Center. Image courtesy of VCCA.

An interdisciplinary artist working in performance, installation, video and mixed media, Quỳnh Lâm was born in 1988 in Saigon, aka. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where she earned degrees in both fine art and architecture.

Quỳnh has been active as an artist for over a decade, creating a diverse body of work that highlights the tensions between personal and collective memory, particularly in regards to the experience of Vietnamese women both in Vietnam and abroad. For instance, in her ‘Mnemonics’ project (2013—ongoing) she delves into her family photo archive, fixating upon a series of portraits of her uncle standing in front of historic mausoleums in Vietnam. She has reproduced these images as faithfully as possible by photographing herself at the same locations. Additionally, she also created paintings of these same sites using mould derived from rotten flowers, an ironic gesture exemplifying her intent to “address the false narratives and myths in history”.

Quỳnh Lâm, 'How to Be Both' (image still), 2019, double-channel synchronised video. Image courtesy of the artist.

Quỳnh has exhibited work at numerous art spaces in Vietnam and abroad, including The Vincom Center for Contemporary in Hanoi, Inlen Photo Gallery in Ho Chi Minh City, and Gallery 1010 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her artbooks have been accessioned to the MOMA Library in New York, as well as the libraries of Yamamoto Gendai in Japan and Salon Saigon in Ho Chi Minh City, and in 2018 she received a Fulbright scholarship funded by the US Department of State. She is currently earning her MFA in Studio Art from the School of Art at the University of Tennessee. Most recently, her double channel video ‘How To Be Both’ (2019) was featured by Mana Contemporary (Chicago/New Jersey/Miami) in partnership with CADAF (The Contemporary and Digital Art Fair) as part of their 2020 Digital Open House event.

Click here to read our conversation with Quỳnh Lâm, where she talks about the development of her career, her contemporary approach to traditional themes and materials, and the ways in which censorship has shaped her art practice.