Dinh Q. Lê

Dinh Q. Lê was invited to the Neiman Center in 2011 to collaborate with former Neiman Center Shop Manager, Gregory Santos, on an edition of prints inspired by the September 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement, along with other concurrent international protest movements. The result is Fragile Springs, a portfolio of 10 screenprints with varnish in a laser-engraved aluminum box. Ten countries are the subjects of Fragile Springs: Burma, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Thailand, Tibet, Tunisia, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Yemen. In a conversation with Moira Roth, Lê described his time in New York during his collaboration:

“Occupy Wall Street was in the air and the revolutions and protest in the Middle East were still happening and Libya had finally gotten rid of Gaddafi. In Vietnam the young people were learning how to protest again and to make their voices heard. I spent time that weekend browsing around on the Internet and became intrigued by how each revolution had been assigned a name and a color. There was the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Green Revolution in Iran, the Pink Revolution in Yemen, the Red Revolution in Thailand, and the Saffron Revolution in Burma. It was interesting to see how the use of a single color gave such a collective sense to each movement. But I also kept asking myself: Who are the people in the crowd? Whom do I look for that I can connect to somehow? When you look at a crowd, you always look for the one person whom you connect to.”

Dinh Q. Lê (1968-2024) is a Vietnamese-American photographer. He received a BFA in photography from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York. His artwork includes installation, video, sculpture, urban intervention and prints. He lives and works in both Vietnam and Los Angeles. Lê’s work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Learn more about this artist:

PPowGallery
MoMA
Rice Gallery