Born 1979, Houston, United States
Lives and works in Danang, Vietnam

Phi Phi Oanh investigates the technical and conceptual qualities of the centuries-old tradition of lacquer ware as a contemporary visual medium. Lacquer’s basic component is tree sap, applied in multiple layers, inlaid, sanded and polished to create a luminous surface. During the French colonial period, Vietnamese lacquer was reinvented; later adopted by revolutionary artists, it became enmeshed in twentieth-century struggles for independence and ideological representations of socialist realism.

Fissio is inspired by the lacquer plaques used (until the twentieth century) to frame altars and shrines and to flank passageways. Inscribed with poetic couplets, the plaques memorialised heroes, events or deeds; marked a family or group; defined morality; praised successful ventures; and gave thanks for natural bounty. The practice declined during French occupation and largely disappeared under communist rule in the 1970s, with changes in ideograms and linguistic practices. Oanh’s imagistic reinterpretation regenerates lost meanings for a contemporary society.