“Life is tactile. Life is emotional, is auditory, is both what you can see and read and hear in front of you. But it also can be what you imagine or feel or hope”. 

This is a reflection from Lien Pham during an interview with Vietnam Art Collection (VAC). The interview reveals the artistic journey of a young and talented artist from Saigon, in which her life shapes her art. 

Lien Pham explores “truth” in art through both tangible and intangible material. She mainly works with photography and video in combination with other mediums such as prints or 3D animation. She hopes that these different materials, which offer layers of emotions and tactility, could enable and invite others to come closer and feel the experiences she tries to convey through her artwork. These experiences might feel like peering into private memories, trauma, or dreams, acting as conduits to reflect on some kind of truth. 

Lien was first impressed with art as a young student, drawn to its beauty. However, the most memorable turning point for her to start pursuing art was at Palais de Tokyo in Paris. “There was a video work and installation by Mika Rottenberg that was beautiful, captivating, but also strange, unsettling, and confusing. I felt that I had to spend more time to understand it, the topics it was talking about, and how the artist approaches making works with these themes.” After this experience, something shifted. Art for Lien was no longer simply about beautiful things to look at; it became about how artists grapple with complicated topics pertinent to contemporary life, through unique and sometimes deeply personal points of view. It sparked conversations about the world in a different way than other media, such as the news or social media. 

Voices of a Distant Star, an exercise in 2017

Being abroad also gave Lien mental health issues to grapple with. In trying to understand herself, Lien has found an answer through photo and videography - her first art practices. Inspired by her favorite filmmaker, Makoto Shinkai, Lien did an exercise in photoshopping his film "5 Centimetres per Second" on top of her photographs capturing Boston, and inputting the subtitle text from another Shinkai's film "Voices of a Distant Star". The exercise got her interested in constructing narratives by remixing found or remembered materials - what she has continued doing since. 

Hey, you are here, 2019 

Through the ups and downs in life, engaging with art forces Lien to think more deeply about what she is going through and evolve how she deals with it mentally “I think the more time you spend processing something, and being mindful about it, your emotions and perspective change and hopefully, you see things clearer for what they actually are.”

For instance, in “hey you are here”, Lien created a huge collage with transparent tape, made up of screenshots from her past breakups and an installation that resembles a dormitory room around the work. If it started with her thinking about mending pieces of herself from these breakups, the work eventually made Lien think about how digital connections were shaping her physical life. The piece reflects on how people try to reconcile real distance with virtual intimacy, but never being able to do so. Her video work "A green mountains school" likewise takes materials from real conversations. The dreamlike work sees Lien reenacting memories, including an SA incident, on a 3DCG backdrop depicting her highschool grounds. 

A green mountains school, 2021

Making art has been helping Lien to process life in ways that don’t necessarily need to reach a conclusion, and are  more exploratory of all different aspects of her relationships. There’s no pressure of resolution, but just to accept it as it is. 

Being a guest artist in VAC Residency 2024, this time, Lien Pham brings “A Bunch of Papers”, “Twenty-something”, and “White Collar”, which are installation works that includes video art, photography, and her father’s poetry, among other found objects. The inspiration sparks from the materials in her house. Her dad’s white collar shirt used to be his work uniform, which reminds her of her own white shirt uniform from school. When looking at them both together, at their whiteness and frostiness, she thought about the juxtaposition between them and a poem her dad had written about how depressing the workplace can be. It is a stark contrast to what is usually the white-collar dream. The work continues to follow the theme of intimacy. In the past, Lien discussed intimacy exclusively in terms of romantic relationships. Over time, it has slowly expanded and intertwined with other themes like belonging and beauty and how humans seek these things in the world that we are living in. Specifically with this work, Lien discusses intimacy in terms of daughter and father relationship. 

(From left to right) White Collar and Twenty-something, 2024

For Lien, her relationship with her father, and the incidents surrounding it “is not something that I can answer simply or directly. It is not something I can even write about thoroughly. It is as much about facts as it is about memory and trauma and the process of overcoming it, and about faith and hope”. No matter what happens, Lien tries to remain still in the face of uncertainty. She keeps her faith by searching for a way to carry on, through reflecting on her father's poetry - his teachings for her - and in her own art practice of trying to convey what is happening to her, her family, and others around them. 

A Bunch of Papers, 2024

When making this work, Lien has no plans for them other than knowing that she has to make them to tell her story and what she is going through. And speaking of the decision to display these works in “peace is a white room”, Lien shares that she trusted Mai Ta and her vision. “Mai understands me as a person and she understands what I try to do via my work, so I know I can trust that my work will somehow be a sensible addition to this show.”. Lien’s belief in Mai’s vision has been proved as the works are now indispensable parts of “peace is a white room”.