Utopia

Artist's Introduction

My art allows me to tell some of my most precious and confronting stories. The internalised intenseness of the bombings of ‘my Hanoi', both the escapes and the sadness of lost friends, family and the real loss of opportunity. I offer the viewer an insight into the private struggle of coming to terms with this dimension of ‘my Vietnam', re-establishing my career as an art teacher in Perth and trying to make all the cultural adjustments in this ‘tangle' that is my life. A tangled dimension that is part of who I am as Kim Le, yes the Asian migrant who confronts you, ‘her otherness of being', ‘her over there' from an estranging and very public episode in the 20th century. Yes, a shared episode for so many, and a particular life-world that never goes away for me, one that I found reverberates with many Australians who lost their ‘being' in Vietnam.  I am now settling in Australia and I live amongst you in a parallel life-world of interrupted normality. Yes, the privacy of Kim Le is still interrupted by the giant shadows of the B52s, the sirens and the urgent escape to the caves, these memories still press against my soul and that is why I make art. But much of my exhibition is expressing the importance of being a teacher, to helping my students establish a personal visual voice and identity.

 I am just that Vietnamese migrant, the foreign voice that enters your Anglo-ear. And yes, I search for acceptance both from others and often from within myself. I am often the outsider, the loner who seeks space of peaceful contemplation to live like you, in search of freedom from the memories and what became a personal loss of traditional and family continuum. The world that I emerged from was a different world, an ancient world connected to great civilisations, a world that does not connect to the contemporary life in Vietnam today, but a world of personal transference and metaphor for deeper anxieties as I search for an explanation.

 My paintings are emotional bridges that I invite you to cross over and share my Vietnamese gaze, and also into my Australian-time as and artist/teacher. I am that ‘she' from that different world encrusted with the many perceived prejudices of a time of war and challenged ideologies. My paintings are but one lens of the Vietnam experience and I let you view both me, my ancient people, the collective diversity of Vietnam and its many historical and cultural layers beyond ‘that war', as strange as it may seem to you. My paintings confront the psychology of my Diaspora. My paintings are reflective constructs in that story we tell ourselves, as part of the diversity of experience that is also Australia's, one which I proudly embrace today. I am Kim Le, whose parents enjoyed successful academic careers until the war splintered my family. I am Kim Le, whose grandfather was the Minster for Education in the last Dynasty of Vietnam. I am Kim Le, an often frightened but equally determined woman who emerged from a broken promise of hope, of tortured souls, ancient beliefs and proud traditions that still burn within despite the extreme pain. By some accident of history, I am Kim Le, part of the struggle of others to forge a post colonial identity, caught up in the agenda of war amongst giants. But most importantly I am like all people trying to make sense of my personal being.

My exhibition is ‘my book', my symbolic play, an insight into the other world that I inhabit, my dreams and nightmares, the journey that is who I am, Kim Le. This exhibition is dedicated to all teachers who helped me and all those who work to nurture voices through visual expression as a form of multicultural repair. This exhibition is for those who are willing to ‘have a go despite the odds', working to educate for a better Australia.