Lien Pham

Midday Night
mixed media
2024

Midday Night is a collection of works born out of family turmoil. With assemblages of made and found materials, I reflect on my father - who is recently incarcerated for his alleged economic crimes - and the complex relationship between us.

Exhibition views from peace is a white room, VAC, Hanoi in 2024



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work #1 - White-collar
(white shirts, hanger, strings, vinyl decal)

White shirts, like a uniform of the burgeoning middle class in post-war Vietnam, embody both aspirations and anxieties. Following my father’s arrest, my encounters with former detainees heightened my awareness of the "white collar dream" fragility. The path to a secure future often navigates a precarious gray area. This piece, a relaxed form symbolizing sacrifice and peace, is juxtaposed with my father's poignant poem that ponders the realities of work.

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work #2 - A bunch of papers
(single-channel video projected onto a bunch of blank papers)

While attempting to maintain balance on a boat, I hold and read a bunch of blank documents. The voiceover quietly reads my father's "Letter of explanation" to the prosecutors, conveying my struggle to maintain faith amidst the bureaucratic complexities of the situation.

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work #3 - Twenty-something
(projection on framed archival print)

Upon a portrait of my father when he was twenty-something, his poem is projected, and only comes into focus as the viewer reaches out their hand. The poem - a self-interrogation on desire and corruption - is the closest thing to my father that I can reach.

So Good
artist’s book
2022

So Good is an intimate book object meant to be viewed page by page. Delicate risograph prints, quickly printed using duotones, unfold a sequence of lush, vernacular landscapes on the road, in Saigon, where couples go to fall in love. The diaristic nature of the work seeks to situate personal history in the rapid development of the city - how tenderness finds its way along roads, abandoned constructions, rare green spaces, and other sites.

Completed during residency with Wedogood - a creative design and risograph studio in Ho Chi Minh City

Medium: Ceramic box with risograph prints
Dimensions: 6 cm x 11 cm x 8 cm (W x L x H)

Exhibition views:

Our Love Utopia
documentary short
2020-2021

Dating apps pervade globally. For a generation innately able to summarize ourselves in a few words and pictures for the online audience, is intimacy at all within our reach? Our Love Utopia [documentary film] seeks such ponderance through an exercise with young people in Ho Chi Minh City. Posing a hypothetical question - a dating app on which users would be represented as bedrooms? - the project uses imagination and conversation as vehicles towards deeper connections.

Completed with support from the SMFA Dean’s Research Award

Medium: single channel video
19 minutes
Trailer linked here

Film stills:


Our Love Utopia [open edition] (2021):
In my online residency with Bay Library during Vietnam’s 2021 COVID-19 lockdown, I expanded the project into a participatory one, in which Instagram users could sign up to join the “dating app.” Users filled out an online form describing what their bedrooms would look like on the “app.” Afterwhich, I rendered their ideas into 3DCG videos. These videos were posted anonymously onto the library’s IG account, where any users could match with someone by messaging us. Through connecting anonymous profiles that shared no name, gender, nor age, the project also seeked to expand our notion of connecction especially in a time of isolation.

Open edition video stills:

Film poster: