Middle School: Untitled by Dinh Q. Lê (Art Card)

About the Artist

Dinh Q. Lê was born in 1968 in Ha Tien, Vietnam, near the Cambodian border. In the late 1970s, his family became refugees and immigrated to Los Angeles in 1979. He studied art in the United States and now lives and works in Vietnam.

About the Art

Untitled is part of a series called From Vietnam to Hollywood. Lê uses a weaving technique taught to him by his aunt to combine images from Hollywood movies with black and white documentary photography of the war and family photographs found in Vietnamese thrift stores.

Look Closely

• Move your eyes around the work of art. List the different images you can find. Which do you notice first? Which images take some time to see?
• Which images are in color? Which are in black and white? Why do you think they are woven together?

Discuss

• The artist used a Vietnamese grass mat weaving technique he learned from his aunt to create this work of art. How is the process of weaving connected to how the artist explores concepts of place and identity in this work? 
• Untitled depicts a war known as the Vietnam War in the United States and the American War in Vietnam. How does our connection to a place shape our perspectives and memories? How do the images in Untitled tell different stories based on the perspectives of the people who created them?

Reflect

As a newcomer to the United States, the artist watched movies to work on his English language skills. He avoided movies about Vietnam until realizing that most of his classmates’ perceptions of Vietnam and him came from these films.

• What impact do movies have on shaping your perceptions of historical events, a culture, a place, or people? 
• How do you think the artist’s experience of displacement influenced his work in Untitled?

Learn More

Visit the “Learn More” sidebar to find more information about the work of art and artist and find other works of art that relate to the subject matter, media, and techniques used by the artist.