Visual Arts Library
Anguished Men
Artist: Dinh Y Nhi
Date:
1998
Medium: Gouache
Dimensions: 58 x 85 cm
Event: Vietnam War
Motif:
Faces
Dinh Y Nhi's paintings present viewers with a disquieting, uncomplicated conduit into a realm of internal turmoil. In her search for simplicity of form, Dinh Y Nhi manages in these works to display a startling complexity and range of texture, shade, and personality. Though limiting her palette to a monochrome of black and white, Dinh Y Nhi succeeds in infusing her works with rich depths of emotion and meaning. Here, one connecting theme seems to be the universality of human sorrows as expressed through particularly individualized forms. According to Dinh, while humans share a common set of features, no two people are ever the same. This is certainly borne out in her representation of simplified and somewhat cartoon-like stick figures and faces. Their almost minimal plainness of form tends to emphasize a certain commonality between figures within each work and even between paintings. Unlike cartoons, however, Dinh's paradoxically mature subjects manage to bear a full range of human emotions. Across the series, their warped bodies and heads play out a gamut of human expressions which range from shock and terror to serene calm and even a hint of playfulness. Their individuality lends to a reading of a personal, unique history for each. Thus, Dinh gives voice to a strangely silent, yet none-too-subtle world of inner conflict that exists for many people in her country. Artist's Statement Wen I was 12, 1 read somewhere that ours is an underdeveloped Third World country, that Vietnam is one of the two poorest countries in the world. As a Vietnamese child, I found it simply disheartening. In the long run, I realized that this is inevitable for an enslaved and continually war-torn country like ours, that we can count on no one but ourselves to work our way toward development and prosperity. With this in mind, as an artist, I'm in no mood to paint flowers and beautiful landscapes. Nor am I interested in scenes of Paradise or Hell. I just want to give expression to what I've experienced and shared with my family and country in these hard times of human society.
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