Over the past thirty years, contemporary art in Vietnam has emerged as a dynamic field shaped by memory, history, and experiment. Many Vietnamese artists now command international recognition, even as a growing domestic market for contemporary art fosters alternative infrastructures of collection and exhibition. Signs and Signals from Vietnam: Essays on Contemporary Art brings together artists, curators, and academics to examine the challenges shaping artistic practice and the writing of contemporary art histories in Vietnam today. Moving beyond familiar North-South or diasporic-national divides, the essays represent the perspectives of Vietnamese, Vietnamese diasporic, and non-Vietnamese writers of different generations, affiliations, and positionalities. Contributors trace the inventive ways artists work with language, narrative, performance, and archival practice to communicate through their art. Key themes running through the volume represent the predominant concerns of Vietnamese artists over the past three decades, including the enduring impact of socialist paradigms in contemporary art, gender, diaspora, memory, and the environment. Together, these essays demonstrate how contemporary art can convey lesser-known histories, contested narratives, and personal perspectives. This volume broadens and deepens the scope of global contemporary art while centring art practices in and from Vietnam. It introduces new ways of writing and thinking about art from Vietnam and beyond, and will be of interest to students and researchers of Southeast Asian and Vietnamese art, museum professionals and curators, educators, and those interested in contemporary art.
