Talk «Hướng ra của tranh lụa đương đại» (The Way Out Is In)

   Silk was once the most adaptable material in Vietnamese art, so why did it come to a standstill at precisely the moment it needed a way out. That question opens this talk in a small space in central Ho Chi Minh City, capped at 30 people so the room stays close enough for real questions.

   The conversation is led by Dr Nguyễn Minh Quang and artist Lê Nguyễn Minh Như. They work through the three elements that make up a silk painting — subject and content, visual language, and the material and technique themselves — then trace the historical arc: practice on silk before and after L'École des beaux-arts de l'Indochine, the post-war years of socialist construction, and where silk painting stands after the Renovation period.

   The history of Vietnamese silk painting reads as a continuous process of absorbing, transforming and restructuring outside influences. Yet once the language of «Vietnamese silk painting» had settled into something established, the medium struggled to generate a new one answering to how society and art have since changed. The talk promises no verdict; it opens more questions and more argument about what happens to a traditional material under contemporary pressure.

   Worth knowing about the speakers:

• — Nguyễn Minh Quang has painted since the 1990s, with an MA from the Vietnam University of Fine Arts and a PhD from the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts
• — Bronze Medal at the National Fine Arts Exhibition in 2000 for the silk painting «Landscape», and the ASEAN Fine Arts Award in 2004
• — he lectures at Ho Chi Minh City University of Fine Arts and connects Vietnamese art institutions with universities and museums across Asia

   It suits art students and practitioners, collectors, and ordinary viewers who want to understand why a sheet of silk carries so much history. No prior knowledge of the medium is assumed, since the talk starts from the beginning.

   Seats are limited and taken by registration. The nearest parking is the TNXP lot at 4 Trương Định, Bến Thành Ward, about 900 m away and a two-minute walk.