Elizabeth Leach Gallery is deeply saddened to announce that Dinh Q. Lê influential artist and dear friend, passed away suddenly on April 6, 2024, in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He was 56 years old.
Known for a multimedia practice that spanned photography, video, sculpture, and installation, Lê’s singular voice reframed global histories of Southern Vietnam, challenging censorship, exploitation, and propaganda. For over three decades, Lê developed an artistic practice that insisted on a deeper engagement with the way global crisis is perceived and understood.
Lê was born in Ha Tien (1968), a Vietnamese town near the Cambodian border. Soon after the Cambodian invasion of Vietnam in 1978, the Lê family made a perilous journey and immigrated to Los Angeles, where he and his six siblings were raised by their mother. Dinh Q. Lê went on to receive his BFA from UC Santa Barbara in 1989 and MFA from The School of Visual Arts in 1992. In 1996, Lê moved from New York to Ho Chi Minh City. In 2007, he co-founded Sàn Art, an artist-led arts space, library, and educational center, providing grassroots support for innovative and experimental Vietnamese artistic practices and perspectives. In 2021, Dinh Q. Lê finally regained his Vietnamese citizenship.
Using his perspective as both an American Vietnamese immigrant and a gay man, Lê’s practice was often concerned with the mutability and insolvability of self-identity, memory, and the historical record. Lê is perhaps best known for his photographic weavings, which utilize a traditional Vietnamese weaving technique learned from his aunt as a child. Art Historian Lucy Lippard wrote, “(Lê) weaves multiple strands of identity and experience, history and memory, mythology and reality, conflict and resolution. In a uniquely disciplined collage form, he illuminates the complex interactions of his two homelands—Vietnam and the United States. Apparent contradictions are transformed into visual ebb and flow, cultural give and take.”
The art of Dinh Q. Lê is co-represented by Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland; P·P·O·W, New York; 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Hong Kong; Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, and STPI, Singapore. Lê was a long-term friend and inspiration to all who had the opportunity to work with him over the years.
We are grateful and honored for the chance to work so closely with Dinh Q. Lê and we will continue to support his legacy.
Read more about Le’s life and influence:
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