Hùng Lê

Bio

Hùng Lê is an interdisciplinary artist born in Đồng Nai, Vietnam. His family immigrated to America when he was seven, settling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Immigrating at a young age has caused a lot of dissonance within Lê’s identity, which fostered his interest in American culture, immigration, and citizenship as a means to understand himself and the history that precedes him. Lê received his BFA and Asian Studies Certificate from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2022. Lê has received multiple awards including the Windgate-Lamar Fellowship Award in 2022, the Jesse-Howard Fellowship in 2022, and the Lead Bank Emerging Artist Award in 2020. Lê is currently a resident at the Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, MO.

Artist Statement

In my dream, Việt Nam was never touched by war. The sun scorches her skin, free of the orange stain, and the rain slows down her breath, reminding her that she is alive. The fields provide and homes stand tall. Here, there were never any bullet shells nor neglected land mines. In this dream, my parents still call Việt Nam home. Má became a weather woman who learned English because she wanted to and Ba became an actor whose father never dragged him out of the audition line. They met by chance and reminisced about their hometown. They fell in love and never had kids. In my dream, they were just two kids in love and they were happy. 

My work investigates the American War in Việt Nam and my experience as a Vietnamese immigrant, in particular the societal expectations of living as an Asian-American. I pull inspiration from my memories, those of my family, and history, specifically analyzing themes such as immigration, identity, sexuality, the American Dream, and the military. Utilizing fabric, photographs, and found objects in combination with laser engraving and indigo-dyeing, I create installations, piecing, and collages in order to excavate memories and history as a means to define and redefine personal identity. Memories are fragile and can easily be manipulated. Through these processes, memories, both personal and collective, become physical spaces where their credibility is questioned, manipulated, and pieced back together. Unearthing and re-creating memories as a means of personal documentation allows me to better understand myself and provide me with a methodology to navigate through larger cultural ideas and established structures such as society and family. Within my works, I am interested in how personal memory is retained within objects and photographs compared to how collective or national memory is created and preserved through education, archives, and propaganda. My work requires that I

constantly examine my position within American society, while also questioning who gets to be the keeper of history and who is left behind and forgotten.