Dinh Q. Lê: Survey 1998 - 2023

Shoshana Wayne Gallery is pleased to present Dinh Q. Lê: Survey 1998-2023.  This is the artist’s eighth solo exhibition with the gallery, and the gallery’s first posthumous showing of Lê’s work. Survey 1998-2023 serves as a memorial exhibition celebrating Dinh’s life and legacy. The exhibition will be on view August 27th through October 11th. 

Survey 1998-2023 traces the arc of Lê’s career, beginning with works shown in 1998 at the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies and concluding with the artist’s most recent and final works from the Cambodia-Reamker series. Bringing together work from Lê’s series: From Vietnam to Hollywood, Persistence of Memory, A Quagmire This Time, Empire, and Cambodia Reamker, the exhibition foregrounds the artist’s investigations into memory and homeland. It also honors the relationship Dinh had with Shoshana Wayne Gallery, presenting previously exhibited works alongside pieces never shown by the gallery.  

The main exhibition space features a selection of photo-weaving works by Lê, exemplifying the work he was known for. Inspired by a traditional Vietnamese matmaking technique taught to the artist by his aunt, Lê’s woven works exposed contradictions between American depictions and memories of the Vietnam War, and the lived realities of those who experienced it. By uniting disparate images, Dinh exposed western audiences to the reality of the war (called the American War by the Vietnamese people) and the long shadow it cast over his homeland. Hollywood productions, victims of the Khmer Rouge, and archival images of war are some of the many images Lê mined to force viewers to confront these truths.   

Lê’s 2003 work Mot Coi Di Ve occupies the space of the second gallery, featuring hundreds of prewar family portraits the artist found in Vietnamese secondhand shops. The installation, whose title translates to “spending one's whole life trying to return home” is a series of curtain-like sculptures comprised of woven portraits with fragments of text. The text comes from three sources: the epic Vietnamese poem The Tale of Kieu, excerpts from interviews with Vietnamese-Americans about their experiences, and excerpts from letters from soldiers and their wives during the Vietnam War. The piece hangs from the ceiling of the space, allowing viewers to examine the photographs and read the texts in Vietnamese, Chinese, and English. By appropriating these family photographs almost as if they were his own, Lê intensely personalizes them while generalizing their content, allowing every viewer to share in the heartaches and remembrances and to see in them their own experiences.   

Survey 1998-2023 is the first exhibition of Lê’s work following his death in April 2024, and it showcases a decades-long relationships between the gallery and the artist. This relationship was cultivated by trips to Vietnam over the years, where Lê shared the beauty and culture of his home country, and a mutual collaboration to found San Art. Dinh was not only an incredible artist, but also an incredible human being. His absence is felt by everyone who had the privilege of knowing him.