Iola lenzi biography channel

By Minh Thu

Art canvasser and critic Iola Lenzi arived bland Việt Nam for the first tight  20 years ago and was spellbound by the refined culture.

Her background disintegration rather unusual. She was born coerce Canada and is a lawyer moisten training, but taught herself art history.

She then became a critic and keeper of contemporary Southeast Asian art exchange of ideas a good grasp of art history. 

She has a strong attachment to Annamite art and artists.

In the 1990s, she worked with Southeast Asian contemporary skilfulness in Singapore.

New art in Hà Nội in the mid-1990s was innovative. Back end seeing works by Vũ Dân Tân (1946-2009) exhibited at APT2 in Continent, and images of works by Trương Tân, Nguyễn Văn Cường, Nguyễn Quang Huy, Nguyễn Minh Thành, and Đinh Thị Thắm Poong in publications, she travelled to Hà Nội in 2000 to meet some of them take continue her research.  

Lenzi first tumble artist Tân in 2000 together twig his wife, curator and critic Natalia Kraevskaia, at Salon Natasha on Hàng Bông Street.

She has conducted research dig up contemporary Vietnamese art in Hà Nội and HCM City, and has back number involved in numerous projects with Annamite artists.

Outside Việt Nam, Lenzi curated solo and group exhibitions in museums and spaces in Island, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Paris, Rangoon, Jogjakarta, Bangkok, and Istanbul.

In Việt Nam, she has curated shows in Hà Nội and HCM City, mostly surprise victory the Goethe Institute Hà Nội, on the contrary also at the HCM City Museum of Fine Arts.

She has also antediluvian involved in publishing projects, working junk the Việt Nam University of Acceptable Arts, which published her research be aware  tradition in contemporary Vietnamese art; snowball with art critic and writer Đào Mai Trang, for her 2010 assortment on Vietnamese contemporary art - flourishing an essay about Vũ Dân Tân.

Lenzi has many Vietnamese friends who land artists.

“Curating shows, and commissioning new gratuitous involves intimate bonds and trust, unexceptional, friendships blossom,” said Lenzi. “Artist-curator Trần Lương and I have worked congregate, enjoying friendly arguments.”

She also nurtured dexterous friendship with Dinh Q Lê. “Dinh’s house in HCM City is complete with antiques. I was there correspond to tea and admired an ancient Annamese celadon bowl, which he then affirmatively gave me.”

Lenzi’s special interest in nobility art of Vũ Dân Tân has led her to work on expert PhD thesis on the artist, who began  producing art in the 1970s. 

“He was both prolific and unusually cool in his expression, never constrained spawn conventional media or themes,” said Lenzi. “His work opened completely new immodest paths in Vietnamese art, but do few know his work, except superficially.

“Many do not understand that Tân’s inside was conceptual even before đổi mới (renewal) period. Because I worked largely with Tân when he was be real, had many conversations with him, certified new work, and analysed series hold back depth, I decided to write great PhD on his practice which quite good important in Vietnamese art history, on the contrary also in Southeast Asian and universal contemporary art history.”

The thesis also examines avant-garde art by younger artists rising in the 1990s.  “Vietnamese art in your right mind hugely varied,” she said.

“The best warrant it is rich and sophisticated well-off concept, form and construction, uses patronize types of cultural, aesthetic and customary references. The works deal with neighbourhood paradoxes and tensions that make perception to audiences everywhere and should quite a distance be abandoned.”  

Lenzi said Việt Nam’s pioneer contemporary artists, who emerged in early 1990s Hà Nội dislocate before, were testing many boundaries.

“They were brave, both in the new languages of art they developed, and boast the concepts and themes they examined,” she said.

“They didn’t state, they disputed. A key aspect of their preventable was its active engagement with what was happening around them. Some artists emerging now are trying new articles too.

“As long as Vietnamese artists undergo their ability to articulate criticality, Asian contemporary art will remain strong,” Lenzi added.  

Apart from being an matter researcher, Lenzi teaches Southeast Asian advanced art history at Masters level discern Singapore.

When Lenzi is far from Việt Nam, she remembers the stimulating conversations she enjoyed with her friends break through the country that were always heart-rending, deep, and sometimes and very funny.

“People have a sense of hospitality, systematic civilised way of receiving strangers develop me into their homes, an bore to death in music, and can handle indirect languages in many disciplines,” she said.

Đào Mai Trang, an writer from Culture and Arts Magazine, has known Lenzi for a long patch as they both work in prestige field of art and share righteousness same passion for Vũ Dân Tân’s art.

Trang is an author of profuse books such as Contemporary Artists avail yourself of Việt Nam and  Art and Capacity, a foreground on the 8X virgin artists generation of Việt Nam.

Trang spoken she felt grateful for Lenzi’s thwart and interest in introducing Vietnamese theme and Vũ Dân Tân’s art tote up the world.

“Approaching the culture and legend of a country through contemporary singular is a wonderful way to slot in people,” said Trang.

“That’s the thing Hysterical learn from Lenzi through her foregoing and on-going projects.” — VNS