Xuân-Lam Nguyễn (Photo by Carrie Wilmarth)

The Creative Edit: Xuân-Lam Nguyễn

Posing five questions to new emerging contemporary artists and creatives, we take an informal yet quick and engaging view of their creative practice. Viewers get to discover more about the new generation of artists + creatives helping shape and narrate the creative landscape.

About Xuân-Lam Nguyễn

Xuân-Lam Nguyễn (b. 1993, Hanoi, Vietnam) is a Fulbright scholar currently pursuing an MFA in Painting at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Interplaying between painting, drawing, digital art, sculpture, and printmaking, Xuân-Lam's approach to art-making fuses the practice of an archaeologist and a disc jockey, characterized by exuberant gradients and maximalism. Mining from Vietnamese folk painting, displaced cultural artifacts, colonial photographs, Western art history, pop culture, and autobiography elements, his work explores the intricate intersections of queer identity and glitchy historical narratives, transforming archival references drawn from the past and rebuilding new potentials for the future.

Before coming to the US in 2023, his solo show Rendezvous between the Old & the New was co-organized by the Vietnam National Museum of History & Vietnamese Women's Museum. Xuân-Lam has participated in group shows at the Vietnam Pavilion, World Expo 2020, Dubai, UAE, and various venues in Vietnam. His work is in Phuc Tan & Phung Hung's public art project (Hanoi), the collection of the Embassy of Italy in Vietnam, the Embassy of Germany in Vietnam, and the National Assembly of Vietnam. In 2022, The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Vietnam invited Xuân-Lam to create artwork celebrating the 50 years of diplomatic relationship between The Netherlands and Vietnam. In 2024, the French Development Agency (AFD) invited Xuân-Lam to make public art for the inauguration of the Metro Line 3, the second line ever of the country, the fruit of a collaboration between Hanoi and the French Government.

What was your entry point into art?

I was born in 1993 in Hanoi, Vietnam, and honestly, I was that quiet kid in class who only seemed to stand out when the elementary art teacher complimented my drawings or papercrafts. I didn't come from an artistic background, but my parents were always supportive, especially my mom, a French teacher for orphans and disabled children. Instead of comic books or manga, she bought me art books and signed me up for summer art classes. When I was 14, I taught myself Photoshop just for fun. At 18, I enrolled in the Vietnam University of Fine Arts, majoring in painting. Although the pedagogy was rather old-school, with lots of technical focus and almost zero contemporary art history or theory, I still consider it a vital period and enjoyed my time there.

After undergrad, I worked full-time as a pattern and graphic designer while painting in the evenings. Juggling both for about a year and a half, I eventually quit my day job and lived off freelance commissions, which gave me more flexibility to dive into my practice. In 2017, I held my first solo show in a co-working space because I couldn't find a proper exhibition space. The show succeeded and catapulted my career, then each door opened and led to another. Fast forward to 2022, I was lucky enough to be the first Vietnamese painter to receive a Fulbright scholarship from the US Department of State, and I am currently pursuing my MFA in Painting at RISD.

Your Vietnamese heritage plays a major role in your art practice, what subjects and themes do you pull from your heritage?

Growing up in Vietnam in the 90-2000s was a strange experience. The US lifted the trade embargo and normalized the relation with Vietnam in 1995. After many years of closure, the war-torn country opened up, leading to a massive flux of outside influences that dramatically transformed the economy, quality of life, and culture. Like most of my peers, I was obsessed with MTV, Cartoon Network, etc.. Basically, everything from Western pop culture and neglected my heritage because it was "passé" and not cool. But there was always this lingering sense of guilt.

As I grew older, that ambivalence became more aching, and I started addressing it in my work. It began the project with a Hàng Trống folk painting called Five Tigers, which hung in my grandmother's house. I loved it as a kid and would try to redraw the tiger's powerful stance. Before the French established the École des beaux-arts de l'Indochine in 1925, folk painting was the quintessential of Vietnamese art, integrating daily life elements and manifesting people's beliefs. But since it didn't fit the Western idea of 'fine art,' and with the social upheavals of the 20th century, these traditional works—my childhood sanctuary—have largely been forgotten.

I started creating "me" versions of overlooked folk paintings, combining my two aspects as a painter and digital artist. I reinvented the woodblock art using pencil drawing to make the figures more dynamic while preserving the essence of the original compositions. I then colored the pieces digitally, giving them a contemporary, gradient-filled look reflecting the omnipresent digital screens in modern life. The two layers stacked on each other created a sense of connection from the past to the present. Historically, different kinds of folk painting was created for distinct social classes—Hàng Trống for city dwellers, Đông Hồ for peasants—so in my reinterpretation, I aim to transcend those divisions, rather than just offering a nostalgic retelling.

This project has sparked a deeper dive into Vietnamese heritage and archives. Right now, I'm interested in Orientalist photographs from the late French Indochina period and researching Vietnamese artifacts in museums and auction houses overseas.

If you were not an artist, what would you be?

I've always known I would end up doing something art-related. There wasn't really a "Plan B" for me, so I never gave much thought to an alternative. But if I had to choose, I'd probably be an archivist! I'm pretty organized, and my love for history would definitely come in handy. Plus, I think the idea of preserving and cataloging stories and artifacts would still let me tap into my passion for cultural heritage.

If you had to describe your art in three words, what would that be?

Exuberance, Dissonance, Convergence

You use a combination of traditional and digital mediums, do you have a preference over one over the other?

While the gradients in my earlier work, like the folk paintings from 2016, began digitally, I've since taught myself to create them entirely by hand or turned the work into a sculpture. As a result, my preference has shifted away from relying on digital tools. Now, I'm fascinated by the tactile qualities and surface textures of painting, and I'm excited to explore the balance between the flatness and the richness of textured surfaces. Conceptually, I'm excited about the Glitch Feminism concept by Legacy Russell, so there's a different ongoing relationship between the digital and the handmade in my work.