Posts Tagged ‘Vietnam Art’
Since the 1950s, installation and performance are two branches of contemporary art that have become important facets of mainstream art. Vietnam’s modern artists, forever innovators, are at the forefront of expanding installation and performance art into new realms.
First appearing in Vietnam in the early 1990’s, several small installations and performance shows first appeared at an out-of-the-way corner of Buoi Street, Hanoi, at the stilt house of painter Nguyen Minh Duc. For many years, this was where new art exhibitions, seminars, and meetings of thecontemporary art community took place. The stilt house quickly became known as a generator for the country’s fledgling contemporary art scene.
Dong Ho Painting is a kind of Vietnamese folk painting originating in Dong Ho Village in Song Ho Commune, Thuan Thanh District, Bac Ninh Province. Dong Ho paintings have about 300 years of history in the north of Vietnam.

Dong Ho pictures are printed on a special kind of Dzo paper. The printing paper is made of bark of a tree called “Dzo”. Artists use pine leave brushes to coat Dzo paper with sea bivalve mollusk powder to create a sparkling colorful background. Colors of the painting are refined from various kinds of tree leaves, which people can easily find in Vietnam. Traditional artists use all-natural colors for their pictures: burnt bamboo leaves for black, cajuput leaves for green, copper rust for blue, pine resin for amber, and crushed egg shells mixed with paste for white. The painting is covered by a layer of sticky rice paste to protect the painting and their colors. They are so long lasting, so that it is very difficult to make them dimmer even time or daylight.
