Dinh Q. Lê, Untitled (from the Hill of Poisonous Tree Series), 2008, C-prints and linen tape, 119 x 180 cm
Opening February 13, 2026 – Closing April 11, 2026
10 Chancery Lane Gallery presents Remembrance, a significant tribute to the life and work of Dinh Q. Lê, who stands as one of the most influential contemporary artists to emerge from Southeast Asia.
Curated by David Elliott, the exhibition honors an artist whose practice was driven by profound questions of memory, identity, history, and the unstable terrain that exists between truth and representation.
Born in Hà Tiên, South Vietnam, in 1968, Dinh Q. Lê’s early childhood was shaped by the realities of war until he fled Vietnam with his family in 1978, spending a year in a Thai refugee camp before eventually resettling in the United States.
Growing up as a Việt Kiều—a person never fully belonging to either Vietnam or America—Lê developed a lifelong inquiry into displacement, perception, and the complex politics of historical narrative.
These foundational experiences became the basis of a practice that examined how images construct, distort, and contest our collective memory.
Educated in fine art and photography in California and New York, Lê responded critically to the American cinematic portrayal of the Vietnam War by challenging its one-sided narratives.
While photography became his primary medium, he soon transformed it through his signature technique of photo-weaving, which was inspired by the grass mats woven by his aunt in Vietnam.
By cutting and interlacing photographic strips, Lê created layered and tessellated surfaces in which past and present, fact and fiction, and the personal and political collide.
After returning to Vietnam in the 1990s and permanently relocating to Ho Chi Minh City in 1997, Lê confronted the long silences surrounding the war and its aftermath.
Works such as Cambodia: Splendour and Darkness and Hill of Poisonous Tree reflect his engagement with the traumatic histories of both Vietnam and Cambodia, weaving together archival imagery, prison mugshots, and fragments of Angkor Wat to evoke dignity amid devastation.
In his celebrated series From Vietnam to Hollywood, Lê juxtaposed film stills, news photography, found vernacular images, and art historical references to examine the unbalanced way in which the Vietnam War was mythologized through Western cinema.
His woven compositions destabilize dominant narratives, creating visual fields where histories overlap and meanings interweave in a constant state of flux.
Other major works, including South China Sea Pishkun, Vietnam Inc., and Skin on Skin, extended his inquiry into contemporary Vietnam by addressing rapid economic development, tourism, censorship, and the contradictions of globalization.
His art consistently revealed the gaps between ideology and lived reality, exposing the merging of communist symbolism with capitalist spectacle and public morality with private desire.
Beyond his individual artistic practice, Lê was a vital catalyst in Vietnam’s contemporary art scene, opening his studio and library in 2007 as a gathering space that eventually evolved into Sàn Art.
This internationally recognized platform fostered dialogue, experimentation, and critical education in a context shaped by bureaucratic constraint and state censorship, helping to build a generation of artists who continue to shape the region’s cultural landscape.
Throughout his career, Lê exhibited internationally in major museums and biennales, bringing Southeast Asian perspectives into global discourse while remaining grounded in a deeply humane vision.
His final project in 2024 was a collaborative work titled The Bond that Ties, completed just before his passing, which underscored his lifelong belief in the power of images to both wound and heal.
Remembrance celebrates an artist who wove together fractured histories and contested truths with compassion, precision, and a sense of quiet defiance.
10 Chancery Lane Gallery, which has represented Lê since 2004, invites the public to experience a legacy that continues to resonate across generations and geographies.
The exhibition features works that are held in prestigious institutional collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate London, and M+ Museum in Hong Kong.
This retrospective is curated by David Elliott, a freelance curator and writer whose distinguished career includes directing the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
As the gallery enters its 25th year, it continues its commitment to bringing works that expand horizons and view the world through varying eyes, ideas, and souls.
