Can The Body Remember? Propaganda Images in Performance Art in Vietnam

Can the body remember? aims to be an open question and invites discussion about the impacts of propaganda images in the practice of contemporary performance artists in Vietnam. This question emerged from decades-long conversations I have had with the artists about their works. Examining the strategies leveraged by Lại Diệu Hà, Nguyễn Xuân Bắc, and Trần Lương, I show how these artists have turned government propaganda into a tool for criticism and reflection on their own collective memories in relation to state-sanctioned imagery. Thereby, I show how the artists have turned propaganda images into a tool for criticism and reflection on their own collective memories with propaganda images. Published below is a portion of this longer project, focusing specifically on the third section on the work of Lại Diệu Hà.  Not included in this excerpt is an extended discussion of the performance work Lập Loè by the artist Trần Lương, in which the artist uses the symbolism of a red scarf to think generationally about the imprint of communist ideology on the body; as well as a section on the visual artworks of Ngô Xuân Bắc, whose artistic works are deeply engaged with the many facets of propaganda and its visuality in urban landscape. 

Lai Dieu Ha – The body remembers 

As one of the few female performance artists of her generation, Lại Diệu Hà, born in 1976, is known for her works that raise questions about gender and the role of women that is still shaped by patriarchy and Confucian concepts of virtue that overshadow how women are perceived in Vietnamese society. Often exposing her own body in her performance, ​​she plays with aspects of tab​oo​s, shame and discrimination that are associated with the female body, thereby also reflecting on her experience. The naked body became essential for the artist to radicalize the female body, to break the Confucian framework of virtue and the Western dogma of beauty. It took her ten years to truly remove herself from the prescription of a female body in Vietnamese society. She, too, experienced the pressure of fulfilling beauty ideals of white smooth skin, black ebony hair and a curvaceous body that was perceived as ideal and feminine. The gaze of men had turned her to an object of desire — “Geisha like,” as she recalled — so much so that it was important for her to get rid of these features (rũ bỏ), to throw away this “gift” which for her was also poison. Seeing the body as a tool (cơ thể là dụng cụ), Hà instrumentalized her own body parts, translating them into equipments (đạo cụ trình diễn), which also meant to step out of her comfort zone of being adored and admired by many counterparts. Hà developed a series of “cut off performances” (cắt xẻo) in which she was naked on stage, and used knives and scissors to hurt her own body in front of the audience. According to Hà (to many her otherwise) a woman being naked on stage was something that shocked the people. The performance caused her to be perceived as being hysterical and mad (con dở hơi). Paradoxically, the moment when she was on stage with this performance was also the moment when Hà “did not feel any pain.” To her, it was some sort of resistance against the Confucianist notions of a woman within worship engaging in feminine chastity as part of domestic virtue — of being the gentle sex responding to male obsession. The intervention by and on her own body was a visual act to destroy this long-lasting understanding of women’s exsitence being reserved for men. Being aware of the risk of turning her body and herself as and into an object under the male gaze, after the performance series “cut off” Hà took a break from the arts for a couple of years. According to her, she wanted to open doors, challenging the audience’s understanding of what performance was, but also be able to claim the body still belonged to her. 

Hà is one of a few female performance artists who continuously works with her own definition of what performance is in the context of Vietnam — a medium that was ​​first introduced in late 1990s by artists such as Trương Tân, Nguyễn Minh Thành and by Trần Lương in the early 2000s; a form that has been and remains primarily dominated by male artists. In the context of Vietnam, a country that has been shaped by communist propaganda arts for decades, Hà strongly believes that in Northern Vietnam, performance embodies propagandistic characters. Since the American war in Vietnam, propaganda culture has been constantly and rigidly produced by the Party’s cadre. In literature, music, and dance, certain propaganda images penetrated the body, and propagandistic images are reproduced through gesture. Hà retrospectively spoke about how she’d often use her hand to gesticulate, raising her right hand in the air (vung lên). Later on, she realized that this particular gesture is an image that is familiar to the people in Vietnam, and has been used frequently in propaganda posters. As a daughter of a propaganda poster artist, Hà grew up with these images. They were everywhere in their family house, as her father used to create the posters at home. Hà recalled watching him draw as she (sometimes) helped, him color the motifs, and assisted him and his colleagues distribute the posters in their district. His only child to become an artist, Hà strongly believes that her choice for the arts was deeply influenced by her father. At the same time — and this is the most complex and interesting part of their relationship — she neglected him, and he abandoned his artistic career until he passed away in 2010. It was her father’s death that prompted Hà to deeply engage with his work for the first time. It was Hà approaching propaganda arts that gave rise to propaganda arts that gave rise to Đọc về một tiểu sử (Reading A Person’s Life), a performance resulting from her study with the complex and contradictory relationship she had with her father, propaganda poster artist Lại Văn Thành. 

In Đọc về một tiểu sử (2022), Hà stood on stage and read out loud to the audience a text that she wrote about her father. She also invited the audience to read with her lines she had composed based on fragments of his diary. Reading with her, the voices of the audience overlapped with hers, and they created a dissonance in rhythm and sound, constantly disrupted and intervened by words stuck in throats. During the reading, the audience learned about the poster artist Lại Văn Thành, a story of a man who dedicated his entire life to propaganda arts — an occupation and a commitment to a genre that is largely understood as problematic amongst contemporary artists today. In the text, Hà weaved her own post-humous thoughts about her father with his self-reflection about how he started his career, the challenges he faced, and the shame he developed over the years for not being acknowledged as a true artist by his contemporaries. There were moments of humiliation that he went through as he was working for a communist apparatus that was definitely not constructed on the common narrative of equality, solidarity and brotherhood. Reading these lines, the audience become part of the performance, and they became complicit in his life path, within and throughout all the obstacles and shame.

Hà’s father belonged to a generation of Vietnamese artists who served as soldiers at the front and later, when the American war officially ended in 1975, continued to work as cadres in the production of the state’s propaganda arts. His entire artistic life was built from the persistence of state propaganda art which were and still are, despised and disdained by dissident artists. Work by propaganda artists working in the state’s apparatus have not been acknowledged as works of art. Often, they are understood as being conformed, and lacking artistic creativity and intellectuality. It is precisely this common perception, or perhaps this prejudice, about the production of art and culture under communism that makes it impossible for propaganda to be regarded as something that deserves serious consideration.

Vietnam’s history is shaped by wars, ideologies, and political mischief between 1945 and 1975, and followed by an isolation from the global world until the late 1990s. Vietnamese art history is crucially shaped by socialist realism, and propaganda art is a genre that, due to its complexities, has been largely ignored by scholars. The agony and disdain for propaganda intensified in the 1990s when foreign actors entered Vietnam for the first time, claiming an authority of having “introduced” Western contemporary arts to Vietnamese artists at that time. This is not the place to discuss any further their Janus-faced contribution, but with their arrival, pre-existing socialist realisms and persistent propaganda arts were placed on the scales and compared to Western contemporary art that was, at that time, considered modern, progressive and “civilized” (văn minh) by Vietnamese artists.

For a long time, Hà shared in this climate of anti-propaganda arts. Although — or perhaps precisely because — she grew up with propaganda arts by her father, she ignored and neglected the political, cultural, and aesthetic values of propaganda posters which are, as she now understands, something quite significant in Vietnam. In the last few years, Hà has been interested in the question of how propaganda and performance are conceptually intertwined, and where they diverge from one another. Propaganda and performance share the aim of communication: condensed messages in a limited temporal and spatial framework. At the same time, the notion of time and space is also the aspect that tears them apart. Performance works mostly appear ephemeral: each time they’re different, and never repeatable. The performers react and interact with the environment, sometimes actively affected by their audience. The nature of propaganda arts is the persistence of repetition and frequent endurance. Images created by the artist are made to be multiplied, to be copied by other people (which makes the claim for authorship ridiculous) and finally, to be circulated as far as they can go. At the same time, they function temporally, and the quantity of their being does not guarantee their currency and value. To some propaganda poster artists, propaganda posters need to be on point and on time. This dimension might bring propaganda posters once again closer to performance art. 

In our conversation, Hà mostly emphasized the fact that engaging with her father’s propaganda work shaped the way she now practices performance. She defines performance art as the spirit of being combative, precise, temporal, and on point, which not entirely different from the language of propaganda posters. Hà recalled that as the only girl in the family she often raised her fist to argue with her parents and brother. The fist, also a symbol of socialism and communism, appears again and again in her works. Hà often spans an arc between propaganda images and performance. She works with symbols and the aspects of performativity that can shape social interactions. Hà is interested in the density of symbols in propaganda posters that manifest and shape people’s visual world, leading them to concrete action. 

Now, using propaganda art in her performance, she has turned propaganda art into her medium, using the power of propaganda to re-shape and to re-define the common notion of propaganda art. While this may be interpreted as a proposal to critically rethink propaganda arts in Vietnam in general. Perhaps, one should have the courage to admit that propaganda art has played its part in what contemporary art in Northern Vietnam has become today.