Performing Vietnamerica 50 Years after the War

In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second Indochinese War / Vietnam War / American War, performance artist Ly Hoàng Ly (Vietnam) and Việt Lê (U.S.) will be in residence at UVa from April 8-11 to commemorate the afterlives of war as well as the ongoing transformations of both Vietnam and the U.S. in its wake. They will be visiting classes and meeting with students and faculty, as well as a symposium on Friday, April 11, 12-4pm, in Wilson Hall 117 and 142, featuring talks from UVa faculty Sylvia Chong, Spenser Phillips, Huong Ngo, and Isabel Felix Gonzales about contemporary social and political issues in Vietnam and the U.S., in conversation with film screenings by Ly, Lê, and UVa faculty member Patricia Nguyễn, facilitated by Conrad Cheung and Sylvia Chong.

The culminating event will be a performance of Ly and Lê's newest collaborative work, thương, at the historic UVA Chapel, from 6-7pm.

About the artists:

Ly Hoàng Ly, currently based in Ho Chi Minh City, is a multidisciplinary artist working across poetry, painting, video, performance art, artist's book, installation and public art. Ly received a Fulbright Scholarship and earned her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), majoring in Sculpture in 2013. She spent a year from 2013 to 2014 interning at the Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection (JFABC, SAIC). She also works as a book editor of Youth Publishing House in Ho Chi Minh City since 2000. Ly is the first woman visual artist in Vietnam practicing performance art and poetry performance. Her installations incorporate a level of performance or activation between subjects and objects that unlock sensual affects in the human-materiality nexus.

Việt Lê's creative and critical practice as a queer, disabled artist focuses on sexualities, spiritualities-the physical and the metaphysical. Dr. Lê is the author of Return Engagements (Duke University Press, 2021, which received the 2023 Outstanding Book Award in Media and Visual Culture from the Association of Asian American Studies), and collaborated with Latipa on the art book White Gaze (Sming Sming Books | Candor Art, 2019), which is in the collection of museums internationally including the Guggenheim, Victoria and Albert Museum, SF MOMA, and in over 200 libraries. Việt Lê is Professor Emeritus at California College of the Arts (former Chair, Visual & Critical Studies graduate program). They are a 2022-24 Headlands Bay Area Fellow and '22 Stanford CCSRE Mellon Arts Fellow. Lê has presented their work at The Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada; UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA; DoBaeBacSa Gallery, Seoul, Korea; Sàn Art, Việt Nam; 1a Space, Hong Kong; Bangkok Art & Cultural Center (BACC), Thailand; Civitella Ranieri, Italy; Shanghai Biennale, China; Rio Gay Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; among other venues.