On Monday, Vietnamese artist Xuân-Lam Nguyễn spoke about his background and craft in a talk titled “From Folk to Future: Crafting New Histories and Identity.”
The event was part of the Vietnamese Program Guest Speaker Series, organized by Visiting Lecturer in Vietnamese Trang Tran to foster community and bring new perspectives to the Vietnamese language program.
To a room of students, many of whom knew one another through Vietnamese class, Nguyễn explained the history of folk paintings in Vietnam and his contemporary approach to reenvisioning artistic traditions.
A Fulbright scholar and a second-year Master of Fine Arts candidate in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, Nguyễn described his approach to art as “a combination of an archeologist and a DJ.”
“The idea is to combine something that has a very long history with something very contemporary,” he said.
Nguyễn began his artistic journey by remaking the folk paintings he would see around his grandmother’s house, a form of traditional Vietnamese art.
“This is an artist making the world, and this is my version,” he said. Behind him, the slide showed two rooster paintings side by side: his archival inspiration and his own recreation. His rendition of the animal featured detailed sketching and vibrant gradients while preserving the shape and colors of the original.
Rather than changing the composition or subject of the paintings, he wanted to interpret them in his own way. He did so by combining physical drawings and digital interventions.
Nguyễn has also experimented with sculpture work. This experimentation evolved into a public installation “inspired by a Hàng Trống folk painting of the lion dance,” located on the edge of the Hoan Kiem district in Hanoi, a low-income area.
The installation consists of life-sized children frozen in celebration, mirroring the traditional Vietnamese toy figurines tò he.
His goal was to “bring color, art and humor to this neglected area, uplifting people who may never have the chance to visit a gallery or museum,” he explained.
Throughout the talk, Nguyễn introduced many of his pieces, walking through diverse sources of inspiration, from eighth-to-ninth-century square tiles to modern architecture. While explaining the creative processes for his more recent work, Nguyễn said he was “obsessed with the past.”
“I was looking at a lot of colonial photographs,” he said, pointing to one of his acrylic paintings titled “Huh?” It was inspired by photos “taken during the French colonial period and were used as postcards to promote the idea of an exotic Far East, justifying colonial ambitions,” he wrote in an email to The Herald.
His piece depicts a woman posing for a photograph, her body saturated in shades of pink and yellow, a clear departure from the somber mood of the original black-and-white photo. A set of squares sprinkled throughout the painting give the impression of discolored pixels.
This year, Nguyễn was commissioned by the French government to make an installation celebrating the “inauguration of Hanoi Metro Line 3,” a collaborative effort between the French and Vietnamese governments. “The idea is to connect two cultures,” he said.
“Because I was in Providence over the summer, I could not fly back. So I made this by video-calling my team every day,” he added.
The talk came to a close as he played a video documenting the behind-the-scenes of the project, which featured a montage of his team creating and assembling its various parts. Together, they form a model of a nine-feet tall tram, complete with windows, a staircase and elaborate floral and animal patterns.
Quynh Mai ’25, a student in Tran’s class who introduced Nguyễn, said that she came to the talk because of her background as a performance artist and her Vietnamese heritage.
“I have a lot of Vietnamese art up in my home,” she said. “Growing up and seeing all of it in my family’s house in Vietnam and also my house here, I didn’t realize the history behind it.”
“We are happy to continue to support the students by showing more of Vietnam to the world, and helping (them) understand their heritage and identity,” Tran said in an interview with The Herald.
Noa Ironic, Nguyễn’s classmate in the MFA program, said that his work is “very inspiring.”
“I really admire how Lam is able to navigate the ancient and bring it into the contemporary,” she said. “And he’s the most thorough person I know … He thinks about the painting for another two months before he even starts painting it.”
In the Q&A session of the event, an audience member asked Nguyễn about his plans after RISD.
“The plan is to return to Vietnam for a few years because it’s such a huge privilege to be here in the first place,” he said. “But it’s a long-term goal to return here and to become an artist.
Another audience member asked Nguyễn if he always knew he wanted to pursue visual art.
“Yes, since I was three or four,” he said. “I’ve never thought about doing anything else.”
Elena Jiang is a Senior Staff Writer covering international student life. She is a sophomore from Shanghai, China considering concentrating in IAPA and Literary Arts.
