For Vietnamese multi-hyphenate and art world aficionado Nguyễn Như Huy, translation is an act of “survival, adaptation, and resistance”

COLORS x EDITORIAL | VIETNAM

Writer Giang Nguyễn-Thu speaks to Đà Lạt-based multi-hyphenate and Vietnamese art world aficionado Nguyễn Như Huy about coining the first Vietnamese term for “curator”, his approach to translation as a process of creative co-authorship, and why Vietnamese artists should stop trying to conform to Western perceptions.

While known internationally as the co-curator of the 2013 Singapore Biennial, the 2016 Kuandu Biennale, and as the author of many English publications on Vietnamese contemporary art, Nguyễn Như Huy’s peers simply describe him as someone “well-versed” in art theory. They’re not wrong: over the last twenty years, the Hanoi-born artist, curator, and writer has translated many art theory publications by the likes of Walter Benjamin, Homi Bhabha, John Berger, and Clement Greenberg into Vietnamese. He was part of a team of Vietnamese experts who co-translated Howard Caygil’s ‘A Kant Dictionary’, and has been a vocal stimulator of local and regional discussions about postcolonial and postmodern readings of Southeast Asian contemporary art.

Despite Nguyễn’s impressive academic background, in this interview he’s more interested in talking about the West’s misconceptions of art in “developing” countries than his personal achievements. “Theorization remains a privilege of the West, and most of it is in English,” he says. In 2003, when Nguyễn started work on his first translation of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, it was almost impossible to find any Western writings about Vietnamese art that didn’t refer to the tropes of “censorship” and the Vietnam War. As a result, for Nguyễn Như Huy, translating art theories and igniting discussions in Vietnamese has always been an “act of survival, adaptation, and resistance.” It’s his way of dealing with the absence of written material in the country, and helping local artists to understand their position in the volatile art world.

“When I realized how much had been written about art in English, I was immediately forced into the translation process. It was more an obligation than a choice.”

The necessity for translation in order to exist and thrive is not unfamiliar to intellectuals in Vietnam: for centuries, the country has been facing Chinese and Western powers (it was notably a French colony from 1887-1945), whose customs and languages have consequently influenced the development of Vietnamese culture. For example, one of the country’s poetic masterpieces, ‘The Tale of Kiều’, by the 19th-century poet Nguyễn Du, is in fact an adaptation of a Chinese work. This masterpiece has transformed the Vietnamese language most profoundly without being limited by the original Chinese text, and it has been a generous source of inspiration for Nguyễn’s interpretation of Vietnamese life, especially because he is also a poet.

Born in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, Nguyễn grew up in a country at a crossroads. Starting art school the same year as the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, he trained in the lingering tradition of socialist realism, later establishing a career as a recognized contemporary artist and curator “mostly through self-training”, making use of online resources in English that became available when the country opened itself up to the global flow of trade and information.

Nguyễn Như Huy's personal library

In 2003, Nguyễn won a painting residency fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center in America. After a month of intensive reading at the institution’s library, he stopped painting entirely. Instead, he started working on a practice of “conceptual translation”, while also experimenting with installation and video art. “When I realized how much had been written about art in English, I was immediately forced into the translation process. It was more an obligation than a choice,” says Nguyễn.

After returning to Vietnam from the U.S, he co-founded the country’s first online art magazine, ‘VnVisualArts’, to share his translated works and ignite conceptual discussions about art theories in the Vietnamese language. In 2006, the magazine joined other regional periodicals for a meeting about art and culture publications in Southeast Asia. Held in Singapore, the event was part of Documenta 12’s—an art exhibition held every five years in Kassel, Germany—magazine Project.

Nguyễn is aware that translating English texts into Vietnamese can be problematic: while it is necessary due to the absence of conceptual and artistic vocabulary in the language, there’s a risk of being seen to merely parrot Western ideas. To mitigate this, he approaches translation as an open-ended process of creative co-authorship, in which foreign ideas are introduced to Vietnam, but are also enriched and transformed by the new context they find themselves in.

'Heidegger's Philosophy of Art' by Julian Young, translated by Nguyễn Như Huy

A selection of books Nguyễn has translated

“That’s one of the most wonderful things about cultural translation: entering into an unexpected, collaborative, and ongoing dialogue ignited by a translated term.”

An example of this is Nguyễn’s translation of the English word “curator” in the early 2000s, which didn’t previously have an equivalent in the Vietnamese language. The term he came up with, “giám tuyển”, is now widely accepted by the local art community. To develop it, he searched for elements from Sino-Nom—a semantic field or “writing system” that forms the basis of the Vietnamese language—that correspond to “care”, the Latin root of curator. He chose “giám”, which means “to look after”, and “tuyển”, which means “to select”. By delving deep into Vietnamese semantics, Nguyễn made sure he was introducing his peers to the concept of curation in relation to their own language and culture, rather than just imposing an idea rooted in Western thought.

As the term “giám tuyển” becomes more widespread and commonly used across Vietnam, it will take on its own life, developing new meanings that differ from Nguyễn’s original intention in the process. “Vietnamese speakers will have their own feelings and interpretations of it,” he says. “They may even feel resistant towards it. To me, that’s one of the most wonderful things about cultural translation: entering into an unexpected, collaborative, and ongoing dialogue ignited by a translated term.”

“We’re all unlearning and opening up the idea of Vietnam to ongoing retranslation.”

According to Nguyễn Như Huy, Vietnam is now a thriving hub in the Southeast Asian art scene. More than thirty years after the 1986 Reform—the economic renovation that has transformed Vietnam into one of the most thriving Asian economies—Vietnamese contemporary art now reaches far beyond the stereotypical frames of censorship and the Vietnam War. They are, however, still imposed by many Western observers.

Nguyễn Như Huy says that the challenge for local creatives is to stop creating work that conforms to limiting outside perceptions. For him, the best works in Vietnam come from artists who use their mediums to spotlight their grounded stories, and that invite people from Vietnam and elsewhere to reflect upon their interlinked pasts and futures. “Important art spaces in Vietnam, such as Manzi Art Space (Hà Nội), Mơ Đơ (Huế), Sàn Art (HCM city) and Cù Rú Bar (Đà Lạt), and notable Vietnamese artists, such as Phan Quang, Mai Nguyễn, Bùi Thanh Tâm, Oanh Phi Phi, Nguyễn Huy An, Phan Thảo Nguyên, among others, all provoke reflections about Vietnam as a place of unfinished international entanglement,” he says. “In different ways, we’re all unlearning and opening up the idea of Vietnam to ongoing retranslation.”

'Great philosophers' by Karl Jaspers, currently being translated by Nguyễn

This interview was published as part of COLORS’ editorial coverage running alongside shows produced in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in partnership with the Goethe Institut. Discover some of the Southeast Asian artists we’ve produced shows with here, or read more articles on our editorial platform.

Text: Giang Nguyễn-Thu
Photography: Dai Ngo