POET-VISUAL ARTISTHuynh Le Nhat Tan

Artist Statement

My artistic practice began with poetry before gradually unfolding into painting. This transition did not arise from a departure from language, but from the realization that certain images, memories, and emotional states exceed what words alone can contain. Painting, for me, became another form of poetry—where gesture, surface, rhythm, and color continue what language leaves unfinished.

From my earliest experiments in graphic works and visual-poetic compositions, I have been interested in the space between artist, artwork, and viewer. A work is never fully complete at the moment it is made; it comes alive through perception, interpretation, and emotional encounter. Each painting is therefore a connective mark—an unfinished bridge seeking resonance with those who stand before it.

My early works reflected on the conditions of contemporary urban life: the speed of social transformation, the erosion of identity, the solitude of individuals within crowds, and the fragile values often lost in modern existence. Through image-making, I sought to recover something more elemental—an original sense of human presence, sincerity, and relation.

This inquiry later turned inward. In the body of work Vết căn nguyên (Traces of Origin), I approached painting as a process of excavation. I came to believe that every human state—sorrow, joy, rupture, tenderness, longing—has its own source. To paint was to follow the trace of emotion back toward its hidden origin. The mark on the canvas became both wound and evidence: a sign of time, memory, and psychic depth.

Yet artistic practice cannot remain only within darkness. In recent years, my work has moved toward a quieter and more luminous field. The exhibition Miền thiêng xanh (Sacred Green Realm) marked a significant transformation in this journey. If earlier works confronted pain in order to understand the self, this body of work seeks spaces of healing, ancestral memory, spiritual continuity, and inner peace. Green, here, is not merely a color but a condition of renewal—a threshold where loss may be held gently and life may begin again.

Across poetry and painting, I have never understood art as an answer. Art is a way of asking: What remains of us after grief? How do we carry memory without being imprisoned by it? How may we return, through attention and imagination, to the deepest part of ourselves?

My work moves between trace and silence, fracture and restoration, shadow and light. It is an ongoing attempt to transform lived experience into a place where others may also recognize their own interior journeys.

Solo Exhibitions
2007 – Dấu nối sinh tồn, Viet Art Centre, Hanoi
2022 – Vết căn nguyên, Mây Artspace, Ho Chi Minh City
2025 – Miền thiêng xanh, 22 Gallery, Ho Chi Minh City