In this (un)making episode, we talk with Ho Chi Minh City-based artist, curator, and cultural organizer Dinh Q. Lê. Lê is probably best known for his photo weavings that interlace Western representations of the American war in Vietnam, from Hollywood films to photojournalists’ documentation. His use of a traditional mat weaving technique, taught to him by his aunt, breaks apart and reassesses those fragmentary depictions through a Vietnamese lens.

Along with those iconic pieces, Lê has explored issues of migration, trauma, collective memory, and global conflict through videos and photographs. We spoke briefly about one of the pieces, The Colony, which mixes drone footage of guano mining on the Chincha islands, video of Chinese vessels harassing Vietnamese boats in the South China Sea, and standoffs between the US and Chinese planes in international airspace to explore the human and ecological impact of global capital against the backdrop of the continuing neo-imperial struggles for territory and control.

Our discussion of his current solo exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Art, True Journey is Return, serves as a jumping off point for a conversation about the forced departure of Vietnamese refugees in the wake of the American War in Vietnam and the return of many in the community to the home of their births, including Lê himself. We talk about how these journeys have impacted his work and expanded his worldview, the visual strategies he uses to contend with images, and the rebuilding of collective cultural memories.

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