Exhibition "Indochina and After" The Muse Artspace

The exhibition “Indochina and After” turns its attention to the generations of artists who followed the Indochina period and returned to questions of Vietnamese cultural identity while developing visual languages of their own. Their approaches differ, yet they share a deep engagement with Vietnamese cultural values, transforming them into forms of expression grounded in a modern sensibility.

The exhibition features three artists: Phan Cam Thuong, Ly Truc Son, and Do Thi Kim Doan. Working across distinct artistic practices, they converge in their ability to transform elements of Vietnamese culture into an aesthetic that balances refinement with a sense of the vernacular.

Phan Cam Thuong (b. 1957) closely connects painting with his study of ancient Vietnamese culture, a field also explored by artists of the Indochina period. His work distils cultural memory through imagery, material, and rhythm, evoking a restrained aesthetic and historical depth associated with ancient Vietnam.

Do Thi Kim Doan (b. 1958) uses traditional lacquer to hold memories of family life, warmth, and everyday Vietnam. After more than three decades of working with the medium, she hasdeveloped a restrained and refined surface language, with gardens and figures evoking the elegant atmosphere of an earlier Hanoi.

Ly Truc Son (b. 1949) occupies a rare position between generations of Vietnamese art. Having come into direct contact with the last generation of the École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine and artists such as Bui Xuan Phai, Nguyen Sang, and Nguyen Do Cung, he absorbed their rigorous and poetic aesthetic sensibility rather than their techniques or pictorial language. His work reflects this inheritance while asserting a distinct artistic voice shaped by the war, Đổi Mới, and the development of contemporary Vietnamese art.

Presented at Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi, which has witnessed more than a century of change in the city, the exhibition takes on an additional dimension. Its historic setting recalls the memory of the city while providing a context in which contemporary artistic practices remain connected to cultural values accumulated over time. “Indochina and After” thus brings memory and the present into dialogue through the ongoing flow of artistic creation.

Curator,

Van Vi

1. Artist Phan Cam Thuong

Phan Cam Thuong (born 1957) is a Vietnamese painter, art researcher, and cultural scholar, widely regarded as one of the most influential academic voices in the study of Vietnamese traditional art and contemporary folk culture. He is particularly renowned for his research on Ly, Tran, and Le dynasty art, as well as Vietnamese culture of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Alongside his painting practice, Phan Cam Thuong is the author of 18 books on Vietnamese culture and art, contributing significantly to contemporary understandings of traditional Vietnamese art and cultural life. His research is highly regarded for its ability to connect visual art with anthropology, belief systems, and folk traditions.

In his painting practice, Phan Cam Thuong has developed a distinctive symbolic visual language, deeply influenced by folk art, ritual paintings, traditional theatre, and the architecture of Vietnamese communal houses and temples. His works are held in numerous important private collections in Vietnam and internationally, representing a rare artistic practice in which academic research and painting exist as an integrated whole.

Crane's Wing, Phan Cam Thuong, 60x40 cm, Lacquer, 2026

Golden Crane, Phan Cam Thuong, 90x60 cm, Lacquer, 2026

Melody of Strings and Song, Phan Cam Thuong, 80x60 cm, Lacquer, 2026

The Queen of Mat Pogoda, Phan Cam Thuong, 60x60 cm, Lacquer, 2022

2. Artist Ly Truc Son

Ly Truc Son (1949) is considered one of the important figures of contemporary Vietnamese art, co-founder of the “Son Ta” group, and among the artists who have significantly shaped the development of Vietnamese lacquer painting following the Indochine period.

He previously taught at the Vietnam University of Fine Arts and spent nearly a decade living and working across France and Europe (1989 – 1998). This period became a turning point in the formation of his distinctive visual language, one that connects Eastern aesthetic sensibilities with an international modern spirit.

Ly Truc Son’s works have been presented in numerous international exhibitions, including the 5th Beijing International Art Biennale, and are currently held in the collections of the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum, the National Gallery Prague, and various private collections in Vietnam and abroad.

Painting Studio, Ly Truc Son, 60x52 cm, Lacquer, 2002

Realm, Ly Truc Son, 80x62 cm, Lacquer, 2000

3. Artist Do Thi Kim Doan

Do Thi Kim Doan (born 1958 in Hanoi) graduated from Hanoi University of Fine Arts between 1977 and 1982, and is considered one of the representative female artists devoted to contemporary Vietnamese lacquer painting for more than three decades. She is recognized for preserving an Eastern sensibility through symbolic compositions, simultaneous spatial structures, and her distinctive use of traditional Vietnamese black lacquer.

Within the trajectory of post-Indochine Vietnamese art, Do Thi Kim Doan belongs to a small number of artists who continue to pursue lacquer not as a decorative technique, but as a lived artistic practice. Through images of women, children, gardens, and everyday life, her works preserve a sense of interior memory and the atmosphere of familial life from an earlier Vietnam.