{"id":7737,"date":"2026-11-03T11:55:20","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T11:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/?p=7737"},"modified":"2026-11-03T11:55:20","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T11:55:20","slug":"word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Word-Games: The image-text tango in Vietnamese Contemporary Art"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\"><em>\u0110\u1ecdc b\u00e0i vi\u1ebft ti\u1ebfng Vi\u1ec7t <span style=\"color: #00aae7;\"><a style=\"color: #00aae7;\" href=\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/choi-chu-dieu-tango-cua-nghe-thuat-duong-dai-viet\/\">t\u1ea1i \u0111\u00e2y<\/a><\/span>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\"><b>Artistic change in 1990s Vietnam\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 1990s were a time of artistic exuberance in Hanoi as, following the 1986 Renovation reforms that transformed Vietnam\u2019s centrally planned economy to a market-oriented system, art altered too. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This decade<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> saw most painters refreshing modern Vietnamese painting through expressionism and abstraction.\u00b9<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, a few Hanoi non-conformists frayed independent paths. Vu Dan Tan (1946\u20132009), Truong Tan (b. 1963), Nguyen Van Cuong (b. 1972), Nguyen Minh Thanh (b. 1971), and Nguyen Quang Huy (b. 1971), among others, early in the decade innovated idioms that, unlike Vietnamese modern painting shaped via reception of European academy aesthetics, did not involve foreign-sourced transfer described by Phoebe Scott.\u00b2<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Instead, adopting the momentous social and cultural shifts spurred by Renovation and globalisation as components and drivers of untested visual forms, they initiated contemporary art.\u00b3<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #282828;\">Non-conformists disregarding disciplinary segregation<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\">While Southeast Asian artists often abandoned painting when developing contemporary art, Hanoi pioneers conserved painting and aspects of Beaux-Arts aesthetics.\u2074 But departing from modern pictorial convention, they expanded their media and disciplinary repertoire, and disregarding academy disciplinary compartmentalisation, merged images and text in the graphic field. In 1993, Truong Tan presented in Hong Kong inks that combined figuration and narrative in cursive Vietnamese. In 1994, answering economic reform, Vu Dan Tan began his paper series <em>Money<\/em>, variously-sized humour-filled mock currency featuring multilingual captions. Decades before, he was already marrying images and words, and in 1989 started his abstracted pictogram series <em>Festival Banners<\/em> (1989\u20131993). In 1994, while a student at Hanoi\u2019s Fine Arts University, Nguyen Van Cuong produced <em>My mother is a farmer<\/em>, an ink-on-paper diptych giving equal space to language and image.\u2075 Cuong\u2019s classmate Nguyen Quang Huy also conflated forms and words, repeated as leitmotifs or short narratives. Their classmate Nguyen Minh Thanh text-captioned his whimsical figurative inks. Thanh and Huy\u2019s interest in text-image composites dwindled later in the decade, although Huy morphed his earlier narratives into undecipherable script masking figures and portraits.\u2076 Since Vu Dan Tan, Nguyen Van Cuong, and Truong Tan explored image-text juxtapositions persistently over years, they are the focus here.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7739\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7739\" style=\"width: 1801px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7739\" src=\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig2-Vu-Dan-Tan-Money-1994-scaled.webp\" alt=\"Word-Games: The image-text tango in Vietnamese Contemporary Art\" width=\"1801\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig2-Vu-Dan-Tan-Money-1994-scaled.webp 1801w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig2-Vu-Dan-Tan-Money-1994-211x300.webp 211w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig2-Vu-Dan-Tan-Money-1994-720x1024.webp 720w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig2-Vu-Dan-Tan-Money-1994-768x1092.webp 768w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig2-Vu-Dan-Tan-Money-1994-1081x1536.webp 1081w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig2-Vu-Dan-Tan-Money-1994-1441x2048.webp 1441w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig2-Vu-Dan-Tan-Money-1994-1200x1706.webp 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1801px) 100vw, 1801px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7739\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"color: #282828;\"><em>Vu Dan Tan, Money (1994), gouache, ink, and synthetic paint on paper, 21 x 30 cm.<\/em><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\">How and why did artists incorporate language into art, providing it with conceptual titles, when most were painting descriptively titled, text-free landscapes or interiors? What were the sources of their disciplinary expansion and blurring? As Nora Taylor has written, the early-1990s Hanoi art world was still relatively closed to outside aesthetic trends, and artists had limited access to then-current New York conceptual art\u2077 \u2013 Tran Luong, visiting New York in the early-1990s, was among the few exceptions.\u2078 Vu Dan Tan had been in the USSR (1987\u20131990), and Russia and France (1993-1994), and Truong Tan in Paris in 1994. However, both, along with younger artists discussed here who had never left Vietnam, confirmed that until 1996, when they began travelling for exhibitions, they were unaware of New York conceptual practices \u2013 Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, and Jenny Holzer were unknown.\u2079 When, in 2001, I asked Vu Dan Tan about art in 1993 Paris, he cited Yves Tinguely\u2019s mobile pieces; Truong Tan in 2010 remembered the aesthetics of Paris streets and metro signage, claiming these as influential. While a few foreign artists \u2013 Erix Leroux; Veronika Radulovic \u2013 circulated in Hanoi after 1993, \u2013 their influence on aesthetics is debatable. Vu Dan Tan and Truong Tan had practiced disciplinary crossover before knowing these foreigners\u2019 works. Of the foreigners, Radulovic made word-images, but the Hanoians\u2019 pieces didn\u2019t resemble hers. Plausibly, her text usage, like that of Truong Tan \u2013 their university drawing instructor and friend, who mentored them as an independent \u2013 encouraged Cuong, Thanh, and Huy\u2019s initiatives.\u00b9\u2070 But beyond this, as in wider Southeast Asia where contemporary art broke from modern pictorialism because innovating aesthetic-conceptual methods were needed for answering complex Cold-War and millennium reality,\u00b9\u00b9 Hanoi artists mined local sources and conditions for materials and ideas. They originated new art not as imitation or transfer, but in response to the times. Southeast Asian artists used their surroundings \u2013 its images, materials, and paradigms \u2013 as building-blocks and driving forces; 1990s Hanoi trailblazers were no different: they seized local culture and the fast-changing city to forge contemporary art that resembled nothing else.\u00b9\u00b2<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\">This article, drawing on my research since 2001, revisits examples and contextual reasons illuminating how and why Vu Dan Tan and the others fostered image-word combinations, a marker of Vietnamese and Southeast Asian contemporary art.\u00b9\u00b3 Their environment and its frictions provided physical and intangible sources, while the urge to critically solicit viewers in ways impossible with standard painting explained artists\u2019 attraction to textual components. Typological examples of works by Vu Dan Tan, Truong Tan, and Nguyen Van Cuong demonstrate the text-image methodologies and aims of novel expressions contending with urgent home realities \u2013 imitation was useless, as there were no models for art capturing a \u201cNew Vietnam\u201d in the globalising 1990s.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\"><strong>New Art from components of culture and urban life<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\">The Vietnamese\u2019 penchant for poetry, folklore, and literature is well established. Jamieson observed that Vietnamese of all social strata reference literary allusions and classical language in everyday life.\u00b9\u2074 Even before mass literacy, the great epics recounting Vietnamese history in mythologised form were universally engrained, and Dong Ho festival prints, captioned in <em>Chu Nom<\/em> or <em>Quoc ngu<\/em>, remained relevant into this century. Thus, language-based vernacular forms could inform contemporary art. Late-20\u1d57\u02b0 century Hanoi also yielded visual source material via signage. Posters publicising government campaigns, pervasive around Vietnam, were suited to artistic appropriation, as was international brand advertising infiltrating the Hanoi skyline. Works by Vu Dan Tan and Nguyen Van Cuong suggest the artists not only plundered these text-rich icons, but also drew on the tensions represented by their semantic opposition on Hanoi streets. Nguyen Van Cuong\u2019s 1997 <em>Couleur du Dollar<\/em> (The Colour of Money), part of his <em>Franklin<\/em> series included in the 1998 exhibition <em>Paris, Hano\u00ef, Saigon-l&#8217;aventure de l&#8217;art moderne du Vi\u00eat Nam<\/em> (Paris, Hanoi, Saigon: The Adventure of Modern Art in Vietnam) at the Pavillon des Arts (France), through its image-text juxtaposition and French title, dialogued with tensions between systems as Vietnam and the world embarked on globalisation. The image\u2019s French title meaning \u201cthe colour of money\u201d, and Vietnamese wordplay on colour \u2013 \u201cm\u00e0u \u0111\u1ecf\u201d (red) and \u201cm\u00e0u \u0111en\u201d (black) \u2013 allude to debtors\u2019 solvency\/insolvency, or being in-the-black or in-the-red, so can be read as fingering capitalism\u2019s social ramifications and creation of haves and have-nots. The work takes no position, but via word-image juxtapositions prompts the viewer to think about the world around them. And while rooted in 1990s Hanoi, it conversed with global audiences on capitalism and its impacts which found relevance everywhere.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7742\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7742\" style=\"width: 2560px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7742 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig10-Vu-Dan-Tan-Cadillac-Icarus-from-RienCarNation-1999-scaled.webp\" alt=\"Word-Games: The image-text tango in Vietnamese Contemporary Art\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1711\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig10-Vu-Dan-Tan-Cadillac-Icarus-from-RienCarNation-1999-scaled.webp 2560w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig10-Vu-Dan-Tan-Cadillac-Icarus-from-RienCarNation-1999-300x201.webp 300w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig10-Vu-Dan-Tan-Cadillac-Icarus-from-RienCarNation-1999-1024x684.webp 1024w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig10-Vu-Dan-Tan-Cadillac-Icarus-from-RienCarNation-1999-768x513.webp 768w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig10-Vu-Dan-Tan-Cadillac-Icarus-from-RienCarNation-1999-1536x1027.webp 1536w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig10-Vu-Dan-Tan-Cadillac-Icarus-from-RienCarNation-1999-2048x1369.webp 2048w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig10-Vu-Dan-Tan-Cadillac-Icarus-from-RienCarNation-1999-1200x802.webp 1200w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 2560px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 2560\/1711;\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7742\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"color: #282828;\"><em>Vu Dan Tan and the installation of Cadillac\/Icarus at the 1999 exhibition RienCarNation.<\/em><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\">As 1990s Northern Vietnam emerged from decades of austerity, including food shortages, and then climbed from poor to lower-middle income nearly overnight, inventive artists, seeking new expressive idioms for answering the era and its stresses, claimed whatever was available, including language \u2013 a conceptual-visual component or \u201cmaterial\u201d. Observing widening material sourcing (although not discussing textuality), Ian Howard\u2019s essay for the 1996 <em>Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art<\/em> focused on Vietnamese \u201cmaking do\u201d.\u00b9\u2075 Words, abstract and requiring interpretation, with images served the critical, conceptual purpose of contemporary art.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\">Thus, the disciplinary expansion of text-image alliances, sourced locally in vernacular culture and the city, and in social frictions of globalising Vietnam, was attractively cost-free and versatile. It was also appealing for its ease of audience access and capacity to convey artworks\u2019 questions on economic shifts; changing gender relations; altering views of tradition; rural\/urban dichotomies that were impacting Vietnam\u2019s social contract. Finally, as observed in wider Southeast Asian contemporary art, by enlisting text-rich visual idioms, Vu Dan Tan, Truong Tan, Nguyen Van Cuong, and their friends ensured active viewer involvement with the artwork\u2019s subject matter through reading: textuality compelled audiences to <em>work<\/em> \u2013 thereby buttressing the collectivist, outward-looking perspectives of the pieces.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\"><strong>Typology of textual methods<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\">Research on 1990s Hanoi\u2019s breakaway art, which I began in 2001, reveals textual components as a marker of early Vietnamese contemporary art that I systematised typologically, as summarised below.\u00b9\u2076 Artist biographies reveal shared interest in language irrespective of differing backgrounds and generations.\u00b9\u2077 Vu Dan Tan, born into a Hanoi literary family, wrote stories and played piano in addition to artmaking. Not trained at the Hanoi art school, and drawing cartoons for Vietnam\u2019s national cartoon studios, he saw no justification for disciplinary separation and thus from the 1970s, combined multilingual text and image to extend and complicate iconographic meaning.\u00b9\u2078 As a child, Truong Tan was enchanted by the aesthetics of writing and his teachers\u2019 elegant cursive notes. He took refuge in stories, and in the school library, unlike his classmates who played outdoors. Nguyen Van Cuong recounted his fascination watching his grandfather practicing calligraphy in the family courtyard. Beyond aesthetics, he revelled in the sound of words, and in playing with their meaning. Nguyen Quang Huy was interested in the form and semantics of words, while Nguyen Minh Thanh, drawn to books, studied French when Alliance Francaise began Hanoi classes in 1992. Whatever their personal relationship with language, all agreed that standard mimetic painting could not contend with 1990s Vietnam. Expanding images with sound, space, time, movement, and text was mandatory, hence their development of installation, audio pieces, performance, and novel pictorial-textual aesthetics. Speaking about his and his classmates\u2019 mid-1990s innovations, Nguyen Van Cuong stated: \u201cWe were confronting unprecedented times, so we made other kinds of art to address that, and language was obvious and easy. It took pictures to new places\u201d.\u00b9\u2079<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #282828;\">Titling, series, wordplay, interrogation\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\">Whereas Vietnamese modern painting was usually titled descriptively or poetically \u2013 <em>Girl with Cat, Autumn Memory<\/em> \u2013 Vu Dan Tan and Nguyen Van Cuong created 1990s series about intangible notions necessitating titling that could articulate difficult to illustrate ideas, and sometimes solicit viewer effort through decoding and interrogation, which spurred critical reflection and exchange on societal topics, a marker of contemporary art.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7740\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7740\" style=\"width: 2560px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7740 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-scaled.webp\" alt=\"Word-Games: The image-text tango in Vietnamese Contemporary Art\" width=\"2560\" height=\"2016\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-scaled.webp 2560w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-300x236.webp 300w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-1024x806.webp 1024w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-768x605.webp 768w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-1536x1210.webp 1536w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-2048x1613.webp 2048w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-1200x945.webp 1200w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 2560px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 2560\/2016;\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7740\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"color: #282828;\"><em>Vu Dan Tan, Festival Banners (1993), gouache and ink on newspaper, 42 x 57 cm.<\/em><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\">Vu Dan Tan\u2019s <em>Festival Banners<\/em>, straddling figuration and overscale pictograms, was an early example of the enigmatic language-picture mixing that invited viewers to decipher. The series\u2019 title contributed by cryptically suggesting festivals long discouraged, were re-emerging, so flagging evolving 1990s Vietnamese cultural-social rules and grass-roots voice.\u00b2\u2070 Pilgrims don\u2019t appear in <em>Suitcases of a Pilgrim<\/em>, but the series title connotes geographic and intellectual frontier transcendence and opening Vietnam. Titles of other Vu Dan Tan works <em>Fashion, Amazon<\/em>, and <em>RienCarNation<\/em> suggest concepts not pictured in the physical pieces. <em>RienCarNation<\/em>, a Pacific Bridge, California (US) exhibition based on a repurposed 1961 Cadillac, was enriched by its French-English title\u2019s homophonic wordplay yielding meaning: <em>Rien<\/em>, \u201cnothing\u201d in French; Car; Nation, a teasing meditation on nationhood in the globalising 1990s. Nguyen Van Cuong also used titling conceptually to impart allusive significance and extend critical reach. His <em>Karaoke<\/em> (1996-1997), <em>Franklin<\/em> (1997-1998), <em>Cultural Pollution<\/em> 1999-2000, and <em>Porcelain Diary<\/em> (1999-2001) series contended with difficult-to-picture stresses: sexual liberalisation, rural-urban divides, classism, capitalism, individualism, and effects of encroaching global mass culture. Titling plays on figurative-literal meaning and contra-meaning to amplify artworks\u2019 reading, and thus audience involvement through metaphor, association, contradiction, constructing tension and sometimes interrogation. <em>Franklin<\/em> is literal and metaphoric, picturing historic Ben Franklin, and flagging the concept of money via his portrait on 100 USD notes. Porcelain Diary, a title conjoining unrelated culturally-loaded terms, denoted Hanoi social disconnections.\u00b2\u00b9 Cuong\u2019s 1998 mural installation <em>Give it Title<\/em> summoned viewers to confront the discomforts of New Vietnam, pictured as jostling business-men, motorbikes, farmers, and more.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #282828;\">Image-text mixing: citation, provocation, activation<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\">Typological variations of image-text mixing appeared early-on. As above, Truong Tan\u2019s 1993 inks paired stylised figures with cursive Vietnamese narrative. His 1995 <em>Here Very Dark<\/em> was yet more text-rich. Comprising some 25 monochrome profiles of one protagonist, each was presented as a story episode, the tale advancing via words, not pictures.\u00b2\u00b2<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\">Vu Dan Tan\u2019s image-text fusing altered over time, and unlike Truong Tan, he did not favour grand stories. In the 1980s, painting on maps, posters, and newspapers, he incorporated existing printed words into his images. His picture-text straddling <em>Festival Banners<\/em> encouraged reading, marshalling audiences into dialogue as they \u201cworked\u201d to find meaning \u2013 unlike self-contained imagery absorbing the viewer\u2019s gaze. In the 1990s, Vu Dan Tan painted on word-rich packaging, creating miniature cardboard sculptures pinned or pasted into glass-lidded hawker boxes, surrounded with citations, slogans, and dangling address labels, forming <em>Suitcases of Pilgrim<\/em>. Included in the 1996 <em>Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art<\/em>, the work resonated with Australian audiences. Captions such as \u201cthe finest mask of the world\u201d and \u201cthe fines (sic) cigarettes of the world\u201d, read alongside the work\u2019s iconography, fostered visual-conceptual dialogue on the optimism and downsides of globalisation. Vu Dan Tan\u2019s <em>Money<\/em> series was especially text-reliant, its mascots from world culture and history (Charlie Chaplin, Napoleon, etc.) intersecting with captions that mobilised viewers critically on capitalism and money as engendering exchange, and as a representation of erased borders and mobility.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7743\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7743\" style=\"width: 2560px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7743 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig12-Vu-Dan-Tan-maybe-better-than-other-version-_1996-scaled.webp\" alt=\"Word-Games: The image-text tango in Vietnamese Contemporary Art\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1924\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig12-Vu-Dan-Tan-maybe-better-than-other-version-_1996-scaled.webp 2560w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig12-Vu-Dan-Tan-maybe-better-than-other-version-_1996-300x226.webp 300w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig12-Vu-Dan-Tan-maybe-better-than-other-version-_1996-1024x770.webp 1024w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig12-Vu-Dan-Tan-maybe-better-than-other-version-_1996-768x577.webp 768w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig12-Vu-Dan-Tan-maybe-better-than-other-version-_1996-1536x1155.webp 1536w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig12-Vu-Dan-Tan-maybe-better-than-other-version-_1996-2048x1540.webp 2048w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig12-Vu-Dan-Tan-maybe-better-than-other-version-_1996-1200x902.webp 1200w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 2560px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 2560\/1924;\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7743\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"color: #282828;\"><em>Vu Dan Tan, Suitcases of a Pilgrim (1996), cigarette boxes on paper, worked over with cuts, gouache, pencil, felt pen and ballpoint pen and mounted in inscribed showcase box out of orange painted wood and glass, 31.5 x 41.5 x 4.5 cm.<\/em><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\">Nguyen Van Cuong\u2019s use of text differed from that of his friends. From the declarative <em>My mother is a farmer<\/em>, he shifted to irony-tinged idioms, his <em>Karaoke<\/em> series bearing English and Vietnamese text driving audience assessment of mass culture\u2019s incursion into Hanoi using Karaoke as a trope: \u201ckhong muong karaoke\u201d (no karaoke); \u201ckaraoke go home!\u201d; \u201cday la gi coc tay\u201d (what is this cocktail) \u2013 \u201ccocktails\u201d as cultural mixing. Some captions, reverse-scripted, commanded extra viewer effort to grasp. Nguyen Quang Huy\u2019s experimentation with text was brief, his 1994-1995 inks interweaving one or two words in English and Vietnamese \u2013 \u201cblood\u201d and, \u201cm\u00e1u\u201d \u2013 with diaphanous ink forms. The incongruous juxtaposition of semantic rawness and visual softness was novel, jolting audience response to conditions around them. Later, Huy invented a pseudo-script overlaying women\u2019s portraits, its illegibility conveying the ambiguities of the era.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\">All were multilingual in their textual usage. Vu Dan Tan, as a global citizen, opted for English, French, Spanish, mock Chinese, and mock Cyrillic. Truong Tan adopted French after his Paris trip, and Nguyen Van Cuong favoured English titling for its precision and concision, noting that in English, a complex idea could be expressed in a word or two, while Vietnamese required a sentence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #282828;\">Text-image mixing: trait of contemporary art in Vietnam and beyond\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\">Vietnamese contemporary artists\u2019 utilisation of language has continued into this century: Nguyen Minh Phuoc\u2018s <em>Sleep Walking<\/em> (2003); Bui Cong Khanh\u2019s <em>Stamp on Me<\/em> (2003); <em>Hymne National<\/em> (2010); and <em>Commitment Culture<\/em> (2012); Tuan Andrew Nguyen\u2019s <em>UFOs Sighted Over Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam<\/em>, 2009; Thao Nguyen Phan\u2019s 2013 <em>Silicchalcedon<\/em>, among many. Outside Vietnam, Southeast Asian artists manifested conceptually-underpinned aesthetics contending with social challenges of the nation-building and globalising eras. They borrowed from life, its iconography, techniques, and materials, including language, mostly indigenous. After 1970, FX Harsono, Imelda Cajipe-Endaya, Redza Piyadasa, Nirmala Dutt, Zulkifli Yusoff, Brenda Fajardo, Vasan Sitthiket, Tang Da Wu, Amanda Heng and others bypassed academy disciplinary segregation to combine image and text in contemporary artworks corralling audiences on shared social conditions. Harsono and Cajipe-Endaya\u2019s 1970s image-text conjoining installation <em>Paling Top<\/em> <em>\u201975<\/em> and prints dialogued with viewers, constituting contemporary art. As in 1990s Hanoi, their such picture-word associations were artistically new, yet familiar, so drew audiences into conceptual art.\u00b2\u00b3<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7744\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7744\" style=\"width: 2560px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7744 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig15-Thao-Nguyen-Phan-Silcchalcedon-colour-half-copy-scaled.webp\" alt=\"Word-Games: The image-text tango in Vietnamese Contemporary Art\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig15-Thao-Nguyen-Phan-Silcchalcedon-colour-half-copy-scaled.webp 2560w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig15-Thao-Nguyen-Phan-Silcchalcedon-colour-half-copy-300x225.webp 300w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig15-Thao-Nguyen-Phan-Silcchalcedon-colour-half-copy-1024x768.webp 1024w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig15-Thao-Nguyen-Phan-Silcchalcedon-colour-half-copy-768x576.webp 768w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig15-Thao-Nguyen-Phan-Silcchalcedon-colour-half-copy-1536x1152.webp 1536w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig15-Thao-Nguyen-Phan-Silcchalcedon-colour-half-copy-2048x1536.webp 2048w, https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig15-Thao-Nguyen-Phan-Silcchalcedon-colour-half-copy-1200x900.webp 1200w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 2560px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 2560\/1920;\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7744\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"color: #282828;\"><em>Thao Nguyen Phan, Silicchalcedon (2013) (detail), installation with glass objects and kidney stone.<\/em><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\"><strong>Text-image integration: a locally sourced marker of early contemporary Vietnamese art<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\">Textuality and language appeared in early-20\u1d57\u02b0 century modern art \u2013 Dada, Surrealism, and mid-century Conceptual Art. But groundbreakers fraying new expressive paths in 1990s Hanoi did not need foreign models to enlist words, and as scholars have noted, conceptual methods in art, never monolithic, evolved in multiple centres, according to contextual requisites.\u00b2\u2074 Vu Dan Tan, who was already advancing image-text conflations in the 1970s, along with Truong Tan, Nguyen Van Cuong, Nguyen Quang Huy, and Nguyen Minh Thanh, took Vietnamese art onto uncharted terrain, and ignoring modern stylistic revivals, initiated contemporary art characterised by conceptually-underpinned, contextually-informed aesthetics. Steeped in story-telling tradition, surrounded by vernacular prints and wordy advertising, Hanoi pioneers devised text-picture modes enlisting audiences on home conditions. In opening 1990s-Hanoi, brimming with fresh images and ideas, vanguard artists seized what they could as content and driver of new expressions. With titling, narratives, literary references, and captions woven into pictures, they expanded art beyond description, creating active, audience-reading works that tackle difficult-to-depict risks and promises of Renovation Vietnam.\u00b2\u2075 Among disciplinary borrowings, language-image conjunction is a distinctive and persistent feature of Vietnamese contemporary art. It also anchors Vietnamese contemporary in wider Southeast Asian contemporary art where image-text marriage appeared from its earliest development.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #282828;\"><em>*This article draws on research originally presented in the author\u2019s doctoral dissertation: <\/em>Lenzi, I.G.L. (2020). The contemporary turn in Hanoi, Vietnam, 1989-2002: Vu Dan Tan, Nguyen Van Cuong, Salon Natasha, and doi moi-in-art<em> (PhD thesis, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><span style=\"color: #282828;\"><strong>Words: Iola Lenzi<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #282828;\"><strong>Translation: Art Nation<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[1] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Boitran Huynh-Beattie, \u201cPost doi moi International Reception of Vietnamese Contemporary Art\u201d, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Eye of the Beholdler: Reception, Audience, and Practice of Modern Asian Art<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, eds. John Clark et al, University of Hawaii Press (2006), pp. 271\u2013287.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[2] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Phoebe Scott, \u201cForming and Reforming the Artist: Modernity, Agency and the Discourse of Art in North Vietnam, 1925\u20131954\u201d, PhD diss., University of Sydney (2012), pp. 46\u201356.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[3] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Iola Lenzi, \u201cSeductive Amazons and Liberated Icons\u201d, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Vu Dan Tan + Nguyen Quang Huy<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Atelier Frank &amp; Lee (2001), pp. 1\u201313, makes a case for emergent contemporary art in 1990s Hanoi; Iola Lenzi, \u201cConceptual Strategies in Southeast Asian Art: a local narrative\u201d, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Concept Context Contestation: art and the collective in Southeast Asia<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, ed. Iola Lenzi, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (2014), pp. 10\u201325; Iola Lenzi, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Power, Politics and the Street: contemporary art in Southeast Asia after 1970<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Lund Humphries (2004).<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[4] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Iola Lenzi, \u201cL\u2019art contemporain vietnamien dans le contexte du Sud-Est asiatique: l\u2019oeuvre pionni\u00e8re des ann\u00e9es 1990 cr\u00e9e sur les bases des Beaux-Arts de Hanoi\u201d (Vietnamese Contemporary Art in the Southeast Asian Context: pioneering works of the 1990s built on the foundations of Hanoi\u2019s University of Fine Arts), <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">FAP<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> 7 (2021), pp. 113\u2013141.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[5] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Iola Lenzi,\u201cWord-Power: How Vietnamese Contemporary Art integrates Language in a Visual Practice of Contestation\u201d, paper presented at International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) conference <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Language, Power and Identity in Asia: Creating and Crossing Language Boundaries<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (14\u201316.03.2016).<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[6] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lenzi, \u201cSeductive Amazons and Liberated Icons\u201d, pp. 7\u201311.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[7] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nora Taylor, \u201cWhat is \u0110\u1ed5i M\u1edbi in Art?\u201d, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Southeast Asia Digital Library<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Northern Illinois University (2011).<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[8] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Personal communication with Tran Luong, 0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">7.05.2024.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[9] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Personal communications with Vu Dan Tan, Hanoi, 0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">3.2001; 02.2003<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">; with Truong Tan, Hanoi, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">11.2010; Paris, 12.2015.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[10] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Personal communications with Cuong, Huy, and Thanh from 2010 to 2015 affirm this influence.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[11] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Iola Lenzi, \u201cConceptual Strategies\u201d, pp. 10\u201314.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[12] Lenzi, <em>Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia after 1970<\/em> (2024); Iola Lenzi, \u201cThe contemporary turn in Hanoi, Vietnam, 1989-2002: Vu Dan Tan, Nguyen Van Cuong, Salon Natasha, and doi moi-in-art\u201d, PhD diss., Nanyang Technological University (2020), DR-NTU Research Repository; Iola Lenzi, &#8220;Early Contemporary Art in Vietnam: \u0110\u1ed5i M\u1edbi Shift as Spur of Innovation in Globalizing 1990s-Hanoi,&#8221; The Russian Journal of Vietnamese Studies vol. 6, no. 1 (2022), pp. 73\u201385.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[13] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Iola Lenzi, \u201cSeductive Amazons\u201d (2001); Iola Lenzi, \u201cUrbane Subversion: empowerment, defiance and sexuality in the art of Vu Dan Tan\u201d, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">12 Contemporary Artists of Vietnam<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, ed. Dao Mai Trang, The Gioi Publishers (2010), pp. 13\u201333; Iola Lenzi,\u201cThe Art of the Court Jester: Vu Dan Tan\u2019s Money Series\u201d, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Money For All Times<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Salon Natasha (2010), pp. 10\u201312; Lenzi, \u201cWord-Power\u201d, IIAS (2016).<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[14] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Neil Jamieson, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Understanding Vietnam,<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> University of California Press (1993), preface XI, p. 108.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[15] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ian Howard, \u201cVietnamese Artists: Making do, digging in, breaking out,\u201d in publication of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">2<\/span><\/i><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">nd<\/span><\/i><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Queensland Art Gallery (1996), pp. 49\u201350.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[16] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Iola Lenzi, \u201cSeductive Amazons\u201d (2001); Iola Lenzi, \u201cThe Art of the Court Jester\u201d (2010); Iola Lenzi, \u201cWord-Power\u201d, IIAS (2016).<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[17] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Personal communication with Vu Dan Tan, Hanoi, 03.2001; 02.2003; Nguyen Minh Thanh, Dalat, 1\/2014; Nguyen Van Cuong, Gia Lam, 12.2014; Nguyen Quang Huy, Hanoi, 03.2001; Truong Tan, Paris, 12.2015.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[18] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Personal communication with Nguyen Van Cuong, Gia Lam, 11.2010; 12.2014.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[19] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Iola Lenzi, \u201cEarly contemporary art in Vietnam\u201d, pp. 73\u201385.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[20] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kirsten Endres, \u201cBeautiful Customs, Worthy Traditions: Changing State Discourse on the Role of Vietnamese Culture\u201d, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Internationales Asienforum <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(International Asian Forum) vol. 33, no. 3\u20134 (2002), pp. 303\u2013304. <\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[21] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Iola Lenzi, \u201cLost and Found: Tracing Pre-Modern Cultural Heritages in Southeast Asian Contemporary Art\u201d, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Connecting Art and Heritage<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, ed. Bui Thi Thanh Mai, Vietnam University of Fine Arts \/ The Gioi Publishers (2013), pp. 132.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[22] <i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Negotiating Home, History and Nation: Two Decades of Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia 1991\u20132011<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Singapore Art Museum (2011), pp. 195\u2013196, 243\u2013244; Iola Lenzi, \u201cLooking Out: How Queer Translates in Southeast Asian Contemporary Art\u201d, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> 38, Australian National University (2015).<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[23] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Iola Lenzi, \u201cConceptual Strategies\u201d, pp. 22\u201325.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[24] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As shown by the exhibition publication <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Global Conceptualism: Points of origin, 1950s\u20131980s<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Queens Museum of Art (1999).<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #282828;\">[25] <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Iola Lenzi, \u201cWord-Power\u201d (2016).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iola Lenzi explores the interplay of text and image, a defining language of Vietnamese contemporary art since the 1990s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":7740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[103,204,203],"class_list":["post-7737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-natomy","tag-contemporary-art","tag-iola-lenzi","tag-word-play"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v21.4 (Yoast SEO v26.7) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Word-Games: The image-text tango in Vietnamese Contemporary Art - Art Nation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A widely published scholar, Iola Lenzi (LLB, PhD) teaches Southeast Asian Contemporary Art History and Contemporary Curating at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). In this article, she explores the context and underlying drivers behind word-mage hybrids \u2013 a defining mode of expression embraced by 1990s Hanoi trailblazers as they laid the foundation for Vietnamese contemporary art.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Word-Games: The image-text tango in Vietnamese Contemporary Art\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A widely published scholar, Iola Lenzi (LLB, PhD) teaches Southeast Asian Contemporary Art History and Contemporary Curating at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). In this article, she explores the context and underlying drivers behind word-mage hybrids \u2013 a defining mode of expression embraced by 1990s Hanoi trailblazers as they laid the foundation for Vietnamese contemporary art.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Art Nation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-11-03T11:55:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-scaled.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"2016\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Art Nation\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Art Nation\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"17 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Art Nation\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/bbc53c251ece846325437c3476449d7a\"},\"headline\":\"Word-Games: The image-text tango in Vietnamese Contemporary Art\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-11-03T11:55:20+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/\"},\"wordCount\":3489,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-scaled.webp\",\"keywords\":[\"Contemporary Art\",\"Iola Lenzi\",\"Word-play\"],\"articleSection\":[\"[Art]natomy\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/\",\"name\":\"Word-Games: The image-text tango in Vietnamese Contemporary Art - Art Nation\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-scaled.webp\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-11-03T11:55:20+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/bbc53c251ece846325437c3476449d7a\"},\"description\":\"A widely published scholar, Iola Lenzi (LLB, PhD) teaches Southeast Asian Contemporary Art History and Contemporary Curating at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). In this article, she explores the context and underlying drivers behind word-mage hybrids \u2013 a defining mode of expression embraced by 1990s Hanoi trailblazers as they laid the foundation for Vietnamese contemporary art.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-scaled.webp\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-scaled.webp\",\"width\":2560,\"height\":2016,\"caption\":\"Vu Dan Tan, Festival Banners (1993), gouache and ink on newspaper, 42 x 57 cm.\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Word-Games: The image-text tango in Vietnamese Contemporary Art\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/\",\"name\":\"Art Nation\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/bbc53c251ece846325437c3476449d7a\",\"name\":\"Art Nation\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/art.qweb.com.vn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Art-Nation-smlg-1-96x96.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/art.qweb.com.vn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Art-Nation-smlg-1-96x96.png\",\"caption\":\"Art Nation\"},\"description\":\"Art Nation l\u00e0 \u1ea5n ph\u1ea9m ngh\u1ec7 thu\u1eadt song ng\u1eef duy nh\u1ea5t v\u00e0 h\u00e0ng \u0111\u1ea7u t\u1ea1i Vi\u1ec7t Nam. V\u1edbi \u0111\u1ed9i ng\u0169 bi\u00ean t\u1eadp chuy\u00ean nghi\u1ec7p, ch\u00fang t\u00f4i mang \u0111\u1ebfn nh\u1eefng \u1ea5n ph\u1ea9m ch\u1ea5t l\u01b0\u1ee3ng cao, h\u01b0\u1edbng \u0111\u1ebfn s\u1ee9 m\u1ec7nh lan t\u1ecfa gi\u00e1o d\u1ee5c ngh\u1ec7 thu\u1eadt cho c\u00f4ng ch\u00fang.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/author\/fambizdangbai\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Word-Games: The image-text tango in Vietnamese Contemporary Art - Art Nation","description":"A widely published scholar, Iola Lenzi (LLB, PhD) teaches Southeast Asian Contemporary Art History and Contemporary Curating at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). In this article, she explores the context and underlying drivers behind word-mage hybrids \u2013 a defining mode of expression embraced by 1990s Hanoi trailblazers as they laid the foundation for Vietnamese contemporary art.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Word-Games: The image-text tango in Vietnamese Contemporary Art","og_description":"A widely published scholar, Iola Lenzi (LLB, PhD) teaches Southeast Asian Contemporary Art History and Contemporary Curating at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). In this article, she explores the context and underlying drivers behind word-mage hybrids \u2013 a defining mode of expression embraced by 1990s Hanoi trailblazers as they laid the foundation for Vietnamese contemporary art.","og_url":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/","og_site_name":"Art Nation","article_published_time":"2026-11-03T11:55:20+00:00","og_image":[{"width":2560,"height":2016,"url":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-scaled.webp","type":"image\/webp"}],"author":"Art Nation","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Art Nation","Est. reading time":"17 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/"},"author":{"name":"Art Nation","@id":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/bbc53c251ece846325437c3476449d7a"},"headline":"Word-Games: The image-text tango in Vietnamese Contemporary Art","datePublished":"2026-11-03T11:55:20+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/"},"wordCount":3489,"commentCount":0,"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-scaled.webp","keywords":["Contemporary Art","Iola Lenzi","Word-play"],"articleSection":["[Art]natomy"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/","url":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/","name":"Word-Games: The image-text tango in Vietnamese Contemporary Art - Art Nation","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-scaled.webp","datePublished":"2026-11-03T11:55:20+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/bbc53c251ece846325437c3476449d7a"},"description":"A widely published scholar, Iola Lenzi (LLB, PhD) teaches Southeast Asian Contemporary Art History and Contemporary Curating at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). In this article, she explores the context and underlying drivers behind word-mage hybrids \u2013 a defining mode of expression embraced by 1990s Hanoi trailblazers as they laid the foundation for Vietnamese contemporary art.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-scaled.webp","contentUrl":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fig3-Vu-Dan-Tan-Festival-Banners-41-x-51.5-cm-on-do-paper-1990-1991-scaled.webp","width":2560,"height":2016,"caption":"Vu Dan Tan, Festival Banners (1993), gouache and ink on newspaper, 42 x 57 cm."},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/word-games-the-image-text-tango-in-vietnamese-contemporary-art\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Word-Games: The image-text tango in Vietnamese Contemporary Art"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/#website","url":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/","name":"Art Nation","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/bbc53c251ece846325437c3476449d7a","name":"Art Nation","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/art.qweb.com.vn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Art-Nation-smlg-1-96x96.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/art.qweb.com.vn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Art-Nation-smlg-1-96x96.png","caption":"Art Nation"},"description":"Art Nation l\u00e0 \u1ea5n ph\u1ea9m ngh\u1ec7 thu\u1eadt song ng\u1eef duy nh\u1ea5t v\u00e0 h\u00e0ng \u0111\u1ea7u t\u1ea1i Vi\u1ec7t Nam. V\u1edbi \u0111\u1ed9i ng\u0169 bi\u00ean t\u1eadp chuy\u00ean nghi\u1ec7p, ch\u00fang t\u00f4i mang \u0111\u1ebfn nh\u1eefng \u1ea5n ph\u1ea9m ch\u1ea5t l\u01b0\u1ee3ng cao, h\u01b0\u1edbng \u0111\u1ebfn s\u1ee9 m\u1ec7nh lan t\u1ecfa gi\u00e1o d\u1ee5c ngh\u1ec7 thu\u1eadt cho c\u00f4ng ch\u00fang.","url":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/author\/fambizdangbai\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7737"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8350,"href":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7737\/revisions\/8350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artnation.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}