In a time of ecological uncertainty and spiritual yearning, six Vietnamese painters invite us into a world where the line between humans and nature dissolves. “Garden of interbeing” unfolds as a quiet, expansive meditation – one that reveals the relational threads binding people, landscapes, memory, and spirit. Ca Le Thang (b. 1949), Nguyen Tan Cuong (b. 1953), Doan Xuan Tang (b. 1977), Nguyen The Hung (b. 1981), Doan Van Toi (b. 1989), and Mifa (b. 1990) – all explore a profound interconnection between humans and nature. At the same time, this event marks the inaugural display of Indochine House's new space at 10 Le Cong Kieu, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City.
Through diverse techniques, from painting on traditional “Điệp” paper (made by applying crushed seashell onto “dó” paper) to experimental lacquer and silk painting, many of them draw on spiritual or philosophical traditions – recurring motifs of water, mist, foliage, and light flow through these artists’ paintings, creating imagery where figures and landscapes merge into one. Despite spanning generations and styles, in different ways, each artist envisions nature and people as inseparably entangled – inviting us to rethink dualisms like self and environment, subject and object.
Materials of memory and transformation form the backbone of many of these practices. Mifa paints on traditional “Điệp” paper, creating multi-layered, abstract landscapes that bridge folk tradition and contemporary thought, grounding fleeting experiences in tactile form. Similarly exploring the connection between past and present, Nguyen The Hung constructs a mystical, multi-dimensional space through his innovative use of lacquer on canvas.
Doan Van Toi draws directly from Zen Buddhist teachings, creating meditative silk paintings that interact with light, space and the viewer. His meditative practice reflects a deep inquiry into the essence of being, evoking stillness in perception and offering a visual language for interconnectedness beyond imposed boundaries. In an open dialogue, artist Nguyen Tan Cuong’s layered compositions play with opacity, luminosity, and the sensory experience of space. His practice explores the tension between form and formlessness, light and shadow, often using abstraction to express inner emotional states or to gesture at a spiritual dimension of perception.
Landscape and memory also flow into one another in the works of Ca Le Thang and Doan Xuan Tang. Ca Le Thang’s gestural, expressive paintings respond to the watery landscapes of the Mekong Delta, where he grew up. Working with gesso and color washes, his compositions are evocations of flood seasons, not as disaster or spectacle, but as vital, cyclical phenomena – dissolving the boundaries between water and sky, memory and earth. Doan Xuan Tang’s canvases, built up with earth tones and atmospheric washes, are rooted in the highland regions of Vietnam – places where nature and people have long been bound together in myth, labor, and daily life. Over time, his imagery has shifted from descriptive to abstract, reflecting a merging of subject, place, and self into an inseparable whole.
Together, these artists offer a poetic re-enchantment of the world where “one is all, all is one” in the “Garden of interbeing” exhibition. Their works resist binary thinking and speak instead to a way of seeing based on relation: human and non-human, matter and energy, tradition and innovation all held within a shared field of being. Painting, here, becomes a way of listening to the world: a practice of attunement, of wonder, of recognition. The result is a landscape not of forms but of relationships – a space of interbeing.
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