Hanoi-based artist and curator Trần Lương is a pivotal figure in Vietnamese and Southeast Asian contemporary art. But what makes his practice so influential, and how does his work contribute to the region’s art historiography?

In this presentation, Dr. Iola Lenzi examines three of Trần Lương’s seminal performances—Steam Rice Man (2001), Moving Forwards and Backwards (2006), and Welts (2007)—analyzing their aesthetic and conceptual structures and their engagement with public space. Providing a broader context, the talk explores key moments in Southeast Asian contemporary art history and Vietnam’s emerging 1990s art scene, where Trần Lương first gained recognition.

Against this backdrop, Dr. Lenzi highlights the pioneering aspects of Trần Lương’s work, positioning it within Southeast Asian performance art while also considering its impact on global contemporary art discourse.

This programme is in conjuncture with  Trần Lương’s first international survey exhibition “Tầm Tã – Soaked in the Long Rain” on display on the Ground Floor Galleries at Jameel Arts Centre running until May 18, 2025. 

Iola Lenzi, LLB, PhD is a Singapore historian and curator of Southeast Asian contemporary art. Her writings and exhibitions frame Southeast Asian contemporary art in Asian cultural and historical contexts, arguing for the field’s distinctive aesthetic and conceptual voice within global art. Her research illuminates connections between artistic innovation and social-political developments in post-1970 Southeast Asia, taking a specialist interest in early Vietnamese contemporary art in 1990s Hanoi. Lenzi teaches Southeast Asian Contemporary Art History and curatorial methods at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and in the Asian Art Histories MA Programme of University of the Arts, Singapore. She has solo or lead-curated some 40 exhibitions in Asia and Europe, and authored-edited six multilingual anthological research publications on Southeast Asian art. She is the author of Museums of Southeast Asia (2004), and her most recent book is Power, Politics and the Street: Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia after 1970 (Lund Humphries, 2024).

Trần Lương (b. Hanoi, 1960) is a performance and visual artist and a major figure in creating space for critical contemporary art in Vietnam. Among the first local artists to experiment with performance and video, his artwork is grounded in local experience. Active in creating opportunities for artists, Trần co-founded the Gang of Five (1983-1996), which organised monthly exhibitions in alternative spaces. In 1998, he co-founded Nhà Sàn Studio, the country’s first artist-led experimental art space, and curated the majority of its exhibitions in the initial four years. He was founding director of the Hanoi Contemporary Art Centre in 2000, a post from which he resigned in 2003 in protest of government corruption. In 2020 he co-founded the Center for Art Patronage and Development (APD), an organisation focusing on artistic development with the orientation of intersecting activities between artistic development and social development. He has continued to direct APD’s programme since its founding. Among his collaborative projects that take art to the people to generate debate about ways of living are the Mạo Khê Coal Mine Art Project, involving workshops with a worker’s community in a rural mine; and On the Banks of the Red River, which presented interactive performance in an impoverished area of Hanoi.