An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1633451526 ISBN 13: 9781633451520

Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2023

Synopsis

An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers is the most comprehensive account of the artist’s career to date, encompassing three decades of her work across photographs, embroideries, videos, and installations.

Through her photographs, videos, installations, and embroidered works, An-My Lê considers cycles of global history and conflict, and the consequences of diaspora, politics, and the sensationalizing of warfare. Born in Vietnam in 1960, Lê came to the United States in 1975 as a political refugee, after the fall of Saigon. Published to accompany the artist’s first New York museum survey, An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers is the first catalogue to present Lê’s three-decade practice in different mediums, with the artist’s seven photographic series alongside textiles, installations, and rediscovered films. The two rivers in the title refer to the Mekong River in Vietnam and the Mississippi River in the southern United States, two important geographic locations that appear in the artist’s photography from the earliest to the most recent works. An essay by the curator Roxana Marcoci examines the full sweep of Lê’s creative practice; four essays by the scholars La Frances Hui, Joan Kee, Thy Phu, and Caitlin Ryan each focus on specific series; and two texts by the writers Monique Truong and Ocean Vuong bring poetic sensibility to Lê’s singular perspective.

About this title

About the Author

Roxana Marcoci is Senior Curator in the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Joan Kee is a professor in the History of Art at the University of Michigan.

La Frances Hui is Associate Curator in the Department of Film at MoMA.

Thy Phu is a Distinguished Professor of Race, Diaspora and Visual Studies in the Department of Arts, Culture, and Media at the University of Toronto, Scarborough.

Caitlin Ryan is Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Photography at MoMA.

Monique Truong is a Vietnamese American author. Her books include The Book of Salt (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), Bitter in the Mouth (Random House, 2010), and The Sweetest Fruits (Viking Books, 2019).

Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese American author. His books include the poetry collection, Time is a Mother (Penguin Press, 2022), and the novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019).

From the Back Cover

An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers is the most comprehensive account of the artist’s career to date, encompassing three decades of her work across photographs, embroideries, videos, and installations.

An-My Lê’s entire body of work considers cycles of global history and conflict, contemplating the impact of displacement, politics, and the sensationalizing of warfare. Born in Vietnam in 1960, Lê came to the United States in 1975, after the fall of Saigon, as a political refugee. Published to accompany the artist’s first museum survey in New York, An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers is the first publication to present Lê’s practice across photographs, embroideries, video and installations from over three decades of her career. From her earliest group of works, Viêt Nam (1994–98), a series of black-and-white photographs taken when she first returned to Vietnam, to her well-known series of intentionally ambiguous landscape photography, Between Two Rivers presents all seven of the artist’s photographic series alongside textiles, installations, and rediscovered films. The two rivers in the title refer to the Mekong and Mississippi river deltas-subjects that Lê has inflected with her own experiences of war and displacement. An overarching essay by curator Roxana Marcoci examines the full sweep of Lê’s creative practice, and is followed by four focused thematic essays by scholars La Frances Hui, Joan Kee, Thy Phu, and Caitlin Ryan, and two creative texts by authors Monique Truong and Ocean Vuong.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1633451526
• ISBN 13: 9781633451520
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 184
• Editor: Marcoci Roxana