Fresh Face: Xuân Lam
Vietnamese painter bridges the past and the present
A&M's Fresh Face is where we profile an emerging artist from the region every month and speak to them about how they kick-started their career, how they continue to sustain their practice and what drives them as artists.
Artist Xuân Lam and his artworks. Image courtesy of the artist.
Based in Hanoi, Nguyễn Xuân Lam (b. 1993) is a visual artist inspired by local traditions and Vietnamese heritage. In 2016, Xuân Lam graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Vietnam University of Fine Arts. Having been awarded a Fulbright scholarship by the United States Government, he will pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Painting at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Autumn 2023. Xuân Lam described his art-making method as combining the work of an archaeologist and a DJ. He also said that his art was like a Rubik’s cube wherein each facet explored various forgotten aspects of Vietnamese culture.
Xuân Lam, The Dutch – Vietnamese Five-fruit Tray, 2021, acrylic, gold leaf on composite. Collection of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Vietnam. Image courtesy of the artist.
For more than seven years, Xuân Lam had enthusiastically researched Vietnamese folk paintings, resulting in two successful solo exhibitions: Folk Paintings: The Remake (2017) and Rendezvous Between The Old & The New (2019). In those series, the artist remade Hàng Trống and Đông Hồ folk paintings by combining pencil drawings with digital gradient colours, creating a modern and refined version. Moreover, he intended to blur the historical socio-economic gap between the city dwellers who bought Hàng Trống paintings and the farmers who could only afford Đông Hồ ones. Aspiring to bring contemporary art closer to young people, Lam collaborates with local design brands and participates in non-profit projects. His notable public art projects include the ones in Phùng Hưng (2018), Phúc Tân (2020) and, most recently, the installation of 36 lanterns at the Hàng Buồm Culture and Arts Center (2022).
Xuân Lam’s body of works appeals not only to the general public but also to governmental establishments. At the invitation of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Xuân Lam designed a work celebrating the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the Netherlands and Vietnam. The composite sculptures are called The Dutch – Vietnamese Five-Fruit Tray (2021). Xuân Lam has works in the collections of the German Embassy, the Italian Embassy, and the National Assembly of Vietnam and is the recipient of the 'Young Talents Programme' of Vincom Center for Contemporary Arts (VCCA).
Xuân Lam, Self-Portrait with “Five Tigers” and an Old Cassette Player, 2021, acrylic, pastel, collage on linen, 170 x 150cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
Despite working with different media like sculpture and installation, Xuân Lam is still most passionate about easel painting. Self-Portrait with “Five Tigers” and an Old Cassette Player (2021) represents a significant shift in Xuân Lam’s style and techniques. This is the artist’s very first self-portrait. During the first seven years of his career, Xuân Lam was well-known for his modern version of Vietnamese folk paintings. One of the remakes, the Five Tigers, can be seen on the right in the background of the self-portrait and thus suggests a tendency towards a new signature theme: Art in art. Despite the big success with such seemingly impersonal works, Xuân Lam has taken a new interest in figurative painting. Influenced by Western contemporary artists such as Luiz Zerbini, Kehinde Wiley and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Xuân Lam experiments with vivid acrylic paints, newspaper collages and photo transfer techniques. The portrait teems with biographical details and references to the cultural items the artist grew up with as a millennial urban kid; for example, the cassette, pop icons, video games, and animation characters. Moving away from nonhuman subjects to tackle the art of portraiture, Xuân Lam demonstrates that contemporary portraits can be fun, high-spirited, and inviting. Such a youthful style popularises the art of portraiture and attracts a wider and younger audience for figurative paintings.
Interview
Artist Xuân Lam and his folk painting remakes. Image courtesy of the artist.
How did your art career all begin?
As a child, I was always the quiet kid that was only visible to my classmates when the elementary art teacher complimented my drawings and papercrafts. My family did not come from an artistic background, but my parents are always supportive. My mom often bought me art books instead of manga and took me to summer art classes because she feared I would become addicted to video games. Growing up, I never thought I would do anything but an art-related job. When I was 14, I taught myself Photoshop for fun. At 18, I enrolled in the Vietnam University of Fine Arts, majoring in painting.
Living in Hanoi, what are some of the challenges to your profession, and how do you overcome them?
There has never been a better time to be a young artist in Hanoi because there are so many opportunities compared to how dry and divided it was ten years ago, especially if you were a painter. From my observation, all the main contemporary art spaces rely on foreign funding and are run by a small and closed group of people. The vast majority of works exhibited in these spaces was pessimistic postmodernism coated with inaccessible and fuzzy artspeak. On the other hand, joining the Vietnam Fine Arts Association was also not a viable option because of its stagnant system. The rest were galleries aimed at tourists filled with paintings from the previous generations of artists that had already established their names from the Doi Moi period, or worse, a lousy imitation of these works.
At one point, I felt my future as an artist was doomed because it would be unthinkable for me to fit into any of these groups. Therefore, I decided to focus on what inspired me and the work I wanted to do. I began my ongoing Folk Paintings: The Remake series by weaving my two artistic sides: a traditional painter and a modern digital artist. In January 2017, I held my first solo show in a coworking cafe because all the aforementioned spaces rejected me, except the Goethe Institut (I wanted the vernissage to happen near the Lunar New Year, but they already had events scheduled months beforehand). Renting a proper exhibition venue was not affordable for a fresh out of school. The show ended up exceeding my expectations and catapulted my career.
Is there any inspiration that you often turn to during times of uncertainty?
I am a nostalgic soul, often dwelling in places I have never been to and eras I never lived in. So, historical online archives have always been my escapism and safe haven.
“I am a nostalgic soul, often dwelling in places I have never been to and eras I never lived in. So, historical online archives have always been my escapism and safe haven.”
Xuân Lam’s studio. Image courtesy of the artist.
What are the most important influences in your diverse practice?
Conceptually speaking, it is the crossover of the past into the present. I am deeply inspired by music, particularly of the African American community. Many R&B and Hip-Hop artists sampled old-school Soul, Funk, and Disco tunes, putting their own twists and creating something fresh and compelling. From a listener's perspective, besides enjoying the new creation, I appreciate it when I can discover the old-but-gold artists/songs and expand my musical knowledge. Therefore, I want to transfer this experience to my work. Traditional Vietnamese art has many intriguing yet unexplored and underrepresented aspects. I also took this investigation as a chance to educate myself about my culture.
“Traditional Vietnamese art has many intriguing yet unexplored and underrepresented aspects.”
From a formal aspect, my practices result from bouncing back and forth between digital art and traditional mediums. This fusion always appears in my projects, whether the initial sketch, aesthetics, or techniques involved. Lately, I have been experimenting with digital collage, one medium that I always have a soft spot for.
Xuân Lam, The Chess Players, 2023, digital sketch, 195 x 145cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
The latest series, Head in the Clouds, Feet On the Grounds (2023), represents a significant shift in your style and techniques. How did this come about?
After more than half a decade of playing with Vietnamese folk painting, I do not want to be imprisoned in a specific niche style and topic. Therefore Head in the Clouds, Feet on the Grounds is my next attempt at bridging the past and present and broadening my universe. This project can be described as a juxtaposition of Vietnamese life from the 19-20th century photographs and the image of modern Vietnam in an imaginary painted environment. It came to fruition and captured my anxiety, escapism, nostalgia, guilt, relief, and social awareness during the two-year on-and-off lockdown due to Covid-19.
One of the significant characteristics of Folk Paintings: The Remake is the blending of pencil drawing with digital gradient colour, creating an effect that I once thought would be near-impossible to do manually. In this project, I want to challenge myself and create work that looks like it was done digitally but all hand-painted. As an artist, we live in an uncertain time when artificial intelligence (AI) threatens the makers' integrity. Pressing a button in Photoshop to create a gradient is easy, but can I do it without the help of a computer?
Xuân Lam, The Red Room, 2022, acrylic, pastel, collage on linen, 145 x 110cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
What does painting offer you that other mediums cannot?
This is a very biassed answer because I am a painter at heart, but it is the tactile feeling and small instances when I dip the brush into the colour and put it on the canvas. I have tried many things but realised that I am always happiest when I can sit in tranquillity painting in my studio, with my favourite playlist playing.
Why did you decide to study in the United States, and where do you see yourself after finishing the master's program?
I was lucky enough to be the first Vietnamese traditional painter to receive the Fulbright scholarship from the US Department of State to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Painting at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design. The world around me suddenly feels like a surrealist Dalí painting as I have always admired many American artists and have a fondness for their diverse cultures. Of all the top MFA Programs in the country, RISD suits me the most as the curriculum balances formal concerns, context, and concept, so I am thrilled to be there. All the faculty are working artists with an impressive alum list. RISD is also very generous with funding and offered me a teaching assistant position.
During my two years there, I plan to concentrate further on my long-term goal conceptually and keep an open mind. I want to experiment with airbrush painting, shaped wooden panels, and numerous printmaking and collage techniques. Regarding myself in the future, I do not want to think about it too much but rather embrace whatever person I might become as long as I stay true to myself.
Xuân Lam, Ha Long Bay Landscape / Pink Cashmere, 2022, acrylic, pastel, collage on linen, 80 x 120cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
What are your hopes for the art scene in Vietnam in particular and Southeast Asia in general?
I hope the art scene will be more open and diverse in Vietnam, as there are still gaps among ordinary people, art and artists working in different disciplines. In terms of infrastructure, it is not sustainable to rely only on foreign or government funding, we also need laws to protect artists, collectors and all art workers.
Regarding Southeast Asia, I hope to see a more positive representation of artists from our region and the Global South on a worldwide scale.
