This autumn, Vietnamese lacquer art takes center stage at the Cernuschi Museum, which will host a unique contemporary installation by Vietnamese-American artist Phi Phi Oanh from October 15 to December 15, 2024.
Parties Inalienables by Phi Phi Oanh explores Vietnamese lacquer, blending its traditional use as a protective varnish applied to three-dimensional objects with its modern transformation into a pictorial means of expression. The powerfully evocative forms of a composite armor with lacquered surfaces draw from various cultures and historical periods that have shaped the artist’s identity, whose hybrid nature fuels her artistic approach.
Parties Inalienables is conceived as an extension of a work created in 2013 entitled Armor Piece. The artist takes an impression of her own torso and transforms it into a lacquered breastplate, reminiscent of ancient armor. She adds a soldier’s helmet from the Việt Minh, adorned with leaves symbolizing camouflage.
"This armor is composed of elements from different regions, cultures, and historical periods that have shaped my identity. Though it draws inspiration from ancient Roman cuirasses, their idealized musculature is replaced by the facsimile of my own body—ordinary, everyday, and marked by the passage of time. First, the imprint was made in plaster. Then, the cuirass was formed using kevlar, carbon fiber, and epoxy—modern materials used in the military for protective gear. The helmet is a colonial helmet used by North Vietnamese soldiers during the resistance war against the United States. Both elements, the helmet and the cuirass, were then covered in traditional Vietnamese natural lacquer. The pattern on the surface of the breastplate mimics the ERDL camouflage [Engineer Research & Development Laboratories], first used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Finally, the anatomical drawing of the heart attempts to capture, in its materiality, my own personal viewpoint.
This armor is composed of elements from different regions, cultures, and historical periods that have shaped my identity. It represents a uniform and reminds us how we are often called to be both bearers and guardians of conflicting thoughts and ideologies.” – Phi Phi Oanh, September 2024.
This event is a collaboration between the Cernuschi Museum and A2Z Art Gallery.
